


some beast will find you by name

by bobtailsquid



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: 75 percent canon compliant, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Main cast all make their appearances eventually, Major Character Injury, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, dont worry mokuba doesnt die, flareshipping - freeform, get in loser we're going drifting, mortifying ordeals of being known, prideshipping - freeform, rivalshipping - Freeform, yugi and yami share a body
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2020-05-16 07:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 73,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19313236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobtailsquid/pseuds/bobtailsquid
Summary: The best laid schemes of Kaiba and kaiju often go awry... now he needs a new drift partner.Chapter 7:The Conn Pod was quiet, save for her voice and a static crackle from Kaiba. He was breathing deep and rapid, the front of his Drivesuit visibly rising and falling with each breath.“...three, two, one. Neural handshake initiated.”No different from Drifting with Joey, Yuugi reminded himself – no different from Yami –as Kaiba’s presence exploded through his head.





	1. Flight of Fancy

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this since October 2018. If you haven't watched Pacific Rim, I've tried to write all the associated lore about Drifting and Jaegers and whatnot accessibly, but the wiki might be your friend regardless; if you HAVE watched Pacific Rim, I've kept the most important things and made some changes... to some other things...... elsewhere................
> 
> A massive thank you to my beta, Lillie, for patiently tolerating every single rewrite that occurred to me at 2 AM on a Wednesday.
> 
> That being said: here's the first chapter. hope you like!

A habit that unnerved people: Marshal Maximilian J. Pegasus reached up to his face with one hand, found purchase with his fingertips, and, with a faint grimace, eased the heavy gold eye from his left eye socket. 

It was a late morning in mid-December. The ocean sprawled vast and silent towards the horizon, a dark mirror of the winter sky above. Standing before the tall windows of his office in the Shatterdome, Pegasus indulged, for a moment, in an old fantasy – the original eye had somehow survived the battle with Relinquished, and was now rolling through the cold black depths of the ocean, keeping watch on the Breach.

This seemed a perfectly plausible reality. He had not seen ( _ha_ ) his left eye destroyed, or even felt it. Pegasus had only awoken, suspended in the wreckage of Funny Bunny off the coast of Los Angeles, his helmet cracked like an egg and that part of his face missing. So, really, it could be anywhere. And if he wanted his own eye at the bottom of the ocean, counting tropical fish and staring unblinking into that gaping, fiery wound, then there it was. 

The same could not be said about Cecilia, because he  _had_ seen her. And for that, Pegasus cursed his right eye.

For some reason, taking the gold eye out helped him think. The gold eye was its own curse, a gift from a strange man in Cairo; Isis said she knew the man and offered nothing else. The things  _this_ eye saw were not so cute as fish. Taking it out almost literally cleared his head of things he did not understand.

He set the gold eye down on his polished wooden desk, turning its dark pupil away. Admiral Dartz was making baffling decisions again. Pegasus had sent him the latest batch of potential Ranger candidates, twenty-three upstanding young people, every single one of them thoroughly tested and interviewed. They would all make fine Rangers, given the chance. 

But Dartz had rejected all of them – without explanation, of course. That sort of thing was beneath him.

That left Pegasus with one option: the one candidate he had  _not_  sent to Dartz.

A slim tablet lay on the desk, next to the eye. Pegasus picked up it and opened the profile for the nth time, gazing down at the small headshot on the first page. 

Seto Kaiba, recently eighteen years old and therefore eligible for the Ranger program, glowered up at him with a resentful stare. Only the slight, proud lifting of his chin saved his expression from becoming Kubrickian. The rest of the page presented him with rote detachment. In excellent physical condition, if somewhat underweight. Living relatives: one, Mokuba, brother, 13 years old. Blood type: A-positive.

By almost every single metric, young Kaiba was one of the best candidates ever tested – maybe even  _the_ best, if not for the shy young man who'd volunteered and shipped out to Alaska back in July for training with Cortex MHAD-7. (Surprises everywhere, these days.) The graphs sang of Kaiba's aptitude; the flowery shapes in his brain scans bloomed with promise. Isis had run him through the standard neural interface adoption test, with every unassigned Cortex, and one of them swept him up in seconds. Most people got ignored by the Jaegers’ artificial intelligences, and failed. But Cortex KSRA-8 begged for Kaiba. No – that silent, bristling ghost in the shell  _demanded_ him as her pilot. 

That kind of demand, from that kind of machine, was not easy to set aside. 

Pegasus frowned, scrolling past those metrics. There was only one number that _really_ mattered, when it came to finding people who could handle a Jaeger: the drift margin, the brain's receptivity to the presence of another mind. A sort of gap in the mental door that allowed other people in. 

Technically, you could not flunk a drift margin. It was a door, not a wall, and there was always a way in. But somehow, the lad had done his goddamn level best, and turned in the narrowest drift margin ever recorded. Proven with science: Seto Kaiba did not play well with others, and should not be a Ranger.

It was a shame a Jaeger’s neural interface still required two people, and solo piloting was still only a dream. If Pegasus fixed that, he’d never have to test for the ability to drift again, and Kaiba would be a shoo-in.

But as it was: if Kaiba couldn’t drift, Kaiba couldn’t pilot.

As far as Pegasus was concerned, he didn’t need the drift margin to feel that Kaiba was unsuitable. It only made a fancy graph out of what Pegasus already knew: Kaiba was a deeply unpleasant young man. He still rankled from the first time they met, four years ago, after Gozaburo Kaiba's death. (If he was honest with himself, he'd always hoped one of the kaiju would show a hint of cleverness, and eat the man…)

Anyway. Back to Kaiba at fourteen, full of fire. _Why have you let this go on so long, why have you let so many Rangers die_ – as if it was Pegasus’ fault that Thousand-Eyes had torn through two Jaegers like tissue paper, until the Ishtars stopped it with Tomb Keeper, or that the Breach swallowed and destroyed every single probe they sent. He almost  _wished_ it was his fault, if only so people could have someone to blame for all this, somewhere to send all their grief and fear and anger. The Breach swallowed all of that, too, and belched out more monsters.

But that cranky little nihilist did not care whose fault it was that kaiju were emerging from the sea, slouching to the slaughter. Kaiba only cared that the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps had not yet stopped them, and made this clear every chance he got. Pegasus gave him very few chances.

With a sigh, Pegasus scrolled to the end of the file and skimmed the transcript of Kaiba’s interview with Isis. Nothing had changed with Kaiba’s manner. At least two _cowards_ , three  _pathetics_ , and a generous peppering of redacted swears.

Still reading the file, he wandered across his office to his coffee machine and tapped the button for an espresso. Something churned deep inside the machine, coffee falling in weak streams into a white cup. It was sad, compared to the robust, bright espressos he used to make in the moka pot for Cecilia, and at the first sip he grimaced, adding a sugar cube from his secret stash.

The other reason why Pegasus had withheld Kaiba’s file from Dartz, and why they were not strangers: he was  _that_  Kaiba, owner and CEO of Kaiba Corporation, and the main manufacturer of Jaegers, aside from the Cortex. A reasonable person would let Kaiba sit this one out, safe and sound, and continue gifting the PPDC more of his shiny toys. Like a terrible, petulant Santa Claus.

But this was not a reasonable time. There was blood in the waters, on the shores. The kaiju were taking the coasts, mile by mile, body by body. Every tragedy was as fresh and raw as the one that came before it. So Dartz had given his order:  _find Rangers. No exceptions._

Fine. Between Kaiba’s wrath and Dartz’s, Pegasus preferred the kid. Dartz was unreadable, even to the gold eye – a terrifying thought.

He sent the file to Dartz and leaned against the desk, taking another sip of the espresso, making a face. Still a tragedy. 

Within minutes, the phone rang. As expected. Pegasus picked up, setting it to speakerphone.

“Marshal Pegasus,” Dartz said, in his smooth drawl. “You didn’t tell me you’d tested Mr. Kaiba. Why didn’t you send me this before?”

“I have a… quibble about his qualifications,” Pegasus said. The gold eye sat on the desk, staring at him; he frowned and rolled it away again, with a brisk wave of his hand.

“And what’s that?” Dartz said, with an air somehow both indulgent and detached; Pegasus knew he was being humored. He decided to try anyway. 

“Admiral, I can’t help but feel he’s better off building Jaegers than piloting them.”

Dartz hummed, a flat, non-committal sound. “I see no reason why he can't do both. And if he really can’t, there are more than enough corporate parasites in the world who can handle Kaiba Corp. Is that it?”

Pegasus found himself bouncing his leg, a nervous, rapid tattoo, the hem of his red slacks flapping around his ankle. He planted his foot firmly on the carpet, feeling stillness flood through his leg.

“No. Kaiba’s drift margin is…  _very_ narrow. I doubt he'd be drift compatible with anyone. I don’t – ”

 “ _I_ will never understand why your machines need two people to pilot. It’s inefficient,” Dartz snapped. “Surely he is drift compatible with _someone_. Does no one come to mind? A lover, perhaps? This says he has a brother?” 

“Let me see.”

Pegasus twisted at the waist, pulling the tablet back to him, opening the file to the front page and that sour little headshot. Kaiba, dating? Never. But there was Mokuba... A child Pegasus vaguely remembered as half-hidden behind Seto, with big grey-blue eyes, clutching his brother’s wrist. He scrolled back to the interview transcript, to the very last questions, and skimmed.   
 

> _ISHTAR: What will you do when we defeat the kaiju?_
> 
> _KAIBA: You mean ‘if.’_
> 
> _ISHTAR: Answer the question, Mr. Kaiba._
> 
> _KAIBA: We’re going to make games. The only reason I haven’t stopped production on Jaeger tech to focus on games is because of the [REDACTED] war._
> 
> _ISHTAR: Why games?_
> 
> _KAIBA: [no response]_
> 
> _ISHTAR: Go on, Mr. Kaiba. Humor me. Why games?_
> 
> _KAIBA: Because we [REDACTED] like them. They purify the soul. They help people escape. People need games, now and after. It’s how we got out of that orphanage, how we took_ – _games are a way out, for us. Out and forward. How’s that? Is that a [REDACTED] answer?  
>  _

Pegasus stopped there.  _We. For us._ Kaiba’s only living relative. Orphans, twice over. Kaiba at fourteen, a boy of unbridled sound and fury, and Mokuba, a quiet shadow at his side. Tucked away between them, a gesture so hidden and fleeting and furtive he’d almost missed it – like a sparrow darting through the trees, hiding from some sharp, hurtling enemy. Kaiba, squeezing Mokuba’s hand. 

A crack in Kaiba’s dull, sullen armor. A seam of light.

“If anyone, his brother,” Pegasus said. “But maybe in five years. He’s only thirteen.”

Dartz’s reply was swift, unconcerned. “No. Test him now.”

“Mokuba Kaiba is a child – ”

“I don’t  _care_ , Marshal,” Dartz said impatiently. “Test the boy. If he qualifies, take them both.”

He hung up, leaving Pegasus smarting in the still morning air, and more than a little unnerved. Dartz was always a little too ruthless for his taste, executing a cold-blooded, incomprehensible calculus of people and machines.  _He who fights monsters should be careful, lest he himself…_ but for some reason, Pegasus suspected Dartz had been awful long before the first kaiju emerged from their unknown dimension, bursting through the seams in the ocean floor. 

He dragged a hand down his face, muttering under his breath. Then he called Isis.

“Marshal Pegasus,” Isis said. “What can I do for you?”

“My dear Lieutenant Ishtar. Do you think Seto Kaiba prefers being knifed in the back or the front?”

A pause.

“You sent Kaiba’s profile to Admiral Dartz,” she said, not so much a question as it was a frosty accusation.

“I know. I  _know_ ,” he said. “After all those promises we made him! Ooh, don’t worry, Kaiba-boy, it’s a formality! We won’t pick you! Every eighteen-year-old has to do it! Set a good example for your employees! Now Dartz wants us testing  _Mokuba_ for drift compatibility.”

“But Mokuba is _thirteen!_ ”

“That’s what I said!” Pegasus threw his hands up in the air, letting them fall to his legs with loud claps. “Of all people! Kaiba couldn’t drift with a stuffed animal!”

“I don’t like it, either,” Isis said, in a low voice. He could almost hear her frown. “But the Admiral must see something in him that we don’t. Some… destiny.” 

“I sure hope he does,” Pegasus said. Slowly, he rolled the eye to the edge of the desk, catching it on the edge. The eye had a charming little quirk of never losing heat, and it was warm to the touch. “Do  _you_ see something?”

Isis had a necklace, a sister to the eye, but unlike the eye, it did not look in. Instead, the necklace looked forward.

She was silent for a long time. Pegasus finished the espresso, staring at the coffee-soaked, sludgy lump of sugar at the bottom of the white cup. That boy he sent to Alaska had a fascinating necklace... 

He shouldn't waste the sugar. Everything was scarce, now. But the coffee machine was an abomination.

“I see struggle,” Isis said, finally. “And… Kaiba in a Ranger suit.”

Pegasus sighed. Dartz always found a way to get what he wanted. “Do you see him in a vengeful fit of fury, stomping me to pieces with the boot of his Jaeger?”

“No, I think you're safe,” Isis said, with a half-laugh.

“Oh, wonderful. Test Mokuba Kaiba for me, will you? And be gentle with him. Both of them.” 

“Of course, Marshal. I’ll send you the results as soon as I have them.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said, and ended the call.

He finished his espresso and picked up the eye, tossing it lightly from one hand to the other. The weight of it, and the small, dense thumpings into his palms, relaxed him somehow. From the windows of his office, he could see the main flight deck of the Shatterdome. The only people out there today, during this rare hour of calm, were a handful of technicians, clustered around the back of a large truck with a familiar KC logo. A new shipment of toys for the Jaegers.

Out there, in that hot, gaping rift in the Pacific Ocean, were the kaiju, unseen. Pegasus cleaned the gold Eye with an alcohol wipe from the pack he kept in his desk and worked it gently back into the socket. The thing grasped him back and he stiffened, suppressing a flinch as it sent a narrow spike of feeling backwards through his head. He was used to it by now – it wasn’t that different from drifting – but it was still strange. The Eye saw weird things: the colors of people’s thoughts, the dreams they forgot, the secrets they didn’t know they had. Every mind a unique dish.

Isis saw things too; vague futures, silhouettes taking shape in the mist. Dartz also saw things. Who the hell knew what. But what Pegasus really wanted to see was an end,  _the_ end – a mending in the ocean floor, a calm sea. Nothing greater than the whales, singing their hymns to each other in the deep. For now, that was nothing more than another flight of fancy.

Now the Kaiba brothers in a Jaeger, raising hell against the kaiju... God willing, he'd see it happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and/or reviews are deeply, deeply appreciated.
> 
> Chapter 2 will be posted towards the end of July. Seto and Mokuba go to the beach!


	2. Ranger Kaiba Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "All personnel report to battle stations. Anti-kaiju operations are now in progress. Rangers Kaiba report to LOCCENT for immediate deployment. I repeat: Rangers Kaiba report to LOCCENT for – "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was delighted to see some nice comments roll in for chapter 1, thank you!! 
> 
> please congratulate isis on her promotion. she worked very hard for it.

[ALMOST THREE YEARS LATER]

TIME: 0317. Domino Shatterdome, Hangar Bay 3. Deep inside his Mark IV Jaeger, wedged into the crawlspace below the cradle of the Conn Pod, Seto propped his laptop against his thighs and ran his code through staging again. He was in an uncomfortable position, curled up and boxed in by distributors, connectors, and all the other mechanical components that brought White Dragon to life. His feet were braced against a coolant pipe and something dug painfully into his side. But that was fine. As long as no one found him, or tattled to Pegasus, he didn’t care what stiff aching caught him in the morning. No one was looking in this direction anyway. The nightwatch had their eyes on the ocean.

And at this hour of the night, with most of the base awash in silence, untouched by the glittering lights of Domino City across the harbor, Seto didn’t have to share White Dragon – not with the technicians, not with Pegasus or Isis, not even with Mokuba. If he held still, illuminated only by the glow of his laptop, a white-green pocket of light in a hot, dark mass, he felt her around him – a heart beat like a bass note, deep and long, rippling out of some secret place. Logically, he knew it was the nuclear vortex turbine somewhere below him, turning over in its sleep. But at this hour of the night, logic lost its form, dissolved by dreams and shadows. At this hour of the night, White Dragon spoke to him.

The staging returned an error message, couched in a bright red warning. Not what Seto wanted to hear from her, right now. He scowled and tabbed back to his code editor, scrolling down lines of code, searching for the part that had stopped him this time.

“Work with me, goddammit,” he muttered. 

No Ranger ever carried more than sixty-four percent of their Jaeger's neural load, with their drift partner shouldering the rest. The neural interface was built that way, with four different rate limiting systems. Any more than that, and the Jaeger itself would destroy you, kaiju be damned. 

But he was going to fix it. Gnawing on him, like a dog working a bone, was the report out of San Francisco two weeks ago, the kind of report that thickened the air in every Shatterdome with grief and urgency. Rangers Ryuzaki and Haga were dead at the jaws of Insect Queen, their Jaeger Tyrant Dragon destroyed. The footage played itself in his head, over and over again, every frame of damage slowed to seconds in the sleepless theater of the mind: _there_. That was the moment they lost.

Which is why Seto had hidden himself in White Dragon in the dead of night, wrestling with the rate limiters. If he could handle more of the neural load, or all of it, he could convince Pegasus to let him start building and testing a solo Jaeger. Pegasus had refused every offer so far, stonewalling him with a coy, irritating smile. No, Kaiba-boy; too dangerous. Too risky. Too reckless.

Seto knew he could do it. He just needed to prove it. And then Mokuba could stop being a Ranger.

With a few deft taps of his fingers, he stripped the code of his previous efforts. Then he paused, tapping a mindless rhythm on the edge of the laptop with his thumbs. The system did not let him raise the cap on his own share of the neural load, as it was designed to stop Rangers from taking too much. But it was not designed to stop Rangers from taking _less_. If he lowered the cap on Mokuba’s load, and made a reassignment channel for the neural packets, and created an imaginary third Ranger that just happened to share all his ports, then White Dragon would give it all to him…

He smiled to himself, fingers moving so fast over the keyboard that the code seemed to ripple in his wake. 

Some time later, he checked the cables connecting the laptop to an access port, committed the code, and ran it through staging again. This time, it was going to work. No one had spent more time wading through the seas of code that ran a Jaeger, except Pegasus. All of the visual display systems in the Conn Pod were Seto's design; the Defense Corps was still using the virtual training simulator he wrote seven years ago. 

White Dragon was taking her sweet time with the staging. Seto shifted more comfortably into the nest of machinery, yawning, tabbing to his email. No issues with anything Kaiba Corp, both a relief and a bore. He tabbed past that to a chess program and chose black.

After the second game, Seto tabbed back to staging. No error message. It _worked_.

Smirking with triumph, he merged with White Dragon's operating systems for immediate deployment. Just enough time for a third game… a small chime sounded, indicating a successful merge, and at last Seto reached up and yanked the cables out of the access ports, with two quick pops. 

Then Seto shimmied sideways and up, through a short chute bristling with machinery, and hauled himself out of the maintenance hatch just between White Dragon's shoulder blades. He dropped lightly onto the catwalk, nearly invisible in the darkness of the hangar bay at night. Next to him, White Dragon rose upwards, a massive, sleek shape, seven thousand tons of power armored in white plating. Only a few lights were still on, spotlighting White Dragon from the front. Light skimmed her shoulders, her head, lining her silhouette in gold.

Now that he was out, he had to go. But Seto stood there a moment longer, closing the hatch, one hand flat on the cool white panel. Three years ago, he had not wanted to be a Ranger. But how many times had White Dragon helped him save Mokuba's life? The lives of everyone on the coasts of his territory? His own? The hangar bay was as still and silent as a cathedral, a space for divine things. And though he cared for none of that, just standing here in the dark, feeling White Dragon thrum against his palm – like a nudge to _leave, go to sleep_ – filled him with a strange, slender yearning. An echo of reverence. 

Finally he slipped away down the catwalk, out of the hangar, and made his way back to the dorms, unseen. Back in his small room, he put away the laptop and undressed, exhaustion weighing in every part of his body. He set the alarm for six A.M. and dropped face down into bed, satisfied with the night's efforts. The simulation bode well. The next time they went out to battle a kaiju, the neural load would shift to him, and he'd show those bastards Pegasus and Dartz there was no fucking need to put children in Jaegers. He could do the whole damn thing himself.

From somewhere outside him, like a voice whispering into his ear, came the thought: _And if he couldn't?_

 _No_ , he breathed, _I have to..._

and fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

TIME: 0600. Seto stopped the alarm and swung his legs out of bed, the rest of him following. Half-asleep, he grabbed a protein bar from the box in his closet and wolfed it down. Then he opened the door that led into Mokuba’s half of their little suite, somewhat less fastidious than his, with clothing scattered on the floor and posters tacked to the walls. Mokuba was still asleep, as expected, and Seto stood in the doorframe, watching, listening. A long, soundless inhale, Mokuba's chest rising steadily, slowly; then a short exhale through his nose, chest dropping once more. His jet-black hair was shorter than it used to be, just grazing his shoulders, and at sixteen years old, he was almost Seto's height. 

They kept almost nothing from each other now – feelings, secrets, memories. Drifting in the Jaeger made sure of that. Drifting also showed them things that had no name, no recognizable shape. Desires with shifting outlines, sunlight on water, untouchable. Refrains that ran without end through Mokuba’s thoughts, so constant they became white noise: _what if he – ? when is he – ? why can't he_ _– ?_ Grief, buried and forgotten like an ancient stone below everything else, waiting to be unearthed once more.

Seto leaned against the doorframe, rubbing sleep from his face. He did not know what to do with any of those things. Drifting made the map, but it did not draw the path. You had to figure that out yourself.

Sometimes he woke Mokuba and dragged him to the gym; today, he decided against it. He'd rather let him sleep. 

He closed the door, got dressed, and left for the gym.

 

* * *

 

TIME: 0812. The mess hall was more crowded than usual. Most of the tables were filled and there was a ceaseless, bubbling chatter, like water flowing over rocks, in a mix of languages: Japanese, English, Mandarin, Tagalog, Spanish. Sunlight slanted in through the high windows, casting hazy warm shafts onto the breakfast-goers. Seto, showered and wearing the standard-issue black shirt, dark blue fatigue pants, and boots, read the news on his phone as he moved through the breakfast line, looking up only to wordlessly stare down an engineer reaching for a pot of fresh coffee.

“Okay. All yours,” the engineer said, lifting his hand in surrender, and Seto took the coffee. He turned around, the pot in one hand, his breakfast tray balanced on the other, scanning the faces at the mess hall tables. Now for Mokuba.

He heard Mokuba's laugh before he saw him, and then saw his hair, pulled back in a thick ponytail that sprayed up and out. Mokuba was sitting with Rebecca Hawkins, his tutor's blonde, bubbly granddaughter and the only other person on base his age. Across from them were two unfamiliar young men, one of them with long, black hair, also tied back, and the other with shaggy, white hair that hung loose down his back.

Seto frowned, slowing his pace, skin turning warm with discomfort. The hushed, calm solitude of his Kaiba Corp office early in the morning was a distant memory. The Shatterdome was full of people, all the time, loud and distracting and inconsistent. And now there were _more_? 

Scowling, he moved to stand just behind Mokuba, staring down at the three people seated around him. Seto had always been tall. Now he also had the muscular build that came from controlling seven thousand tons of metal for almost three years, and his presence landed like a stone in the middle of the table. Whatever conversation they were having collapsed, word by word, under the weight of his arrival. Seto did not care. He wanted to eat breakfast with Mokuba, alone, without inane comments or useless talk. 

Rebecca made a disdainful moue, inspecting her glass of orange juice; as Mokuba’s friend, she was used to him. The newcomers, however – the black-haired man leaned back, lifting his chin, sizing Seto up with a clear, self-assured gaze. This felt like a practical response: _who are you, and why do I care?_ The other seemed uncomfortable, dropping his eyes to his oatmeal, his frail shoulders curling inwards. That was far less interesting. 

He filed their reactions away and sat on the bench next to Mokuba, sliding his tray and the coffee pot onto the table. 

“Hey, big bro,” Mokuba said, in English, for Rebecca's sake. He twisted in his seat, turning towards Seto like a sunflower, smiling brightly. But Seto did not miss the coolness in his eyes, his displeasure at Seto’s manner of arrival. “You should meet these guys. They just transferred in from the San Francisco Shatterdome.”

“‘Big bro?’” the black-haired newcomer said, glancing from Mokuba to Seto. A single red die dangled from his ear. “Oh, Ranger Kaiba! I’m Ryuji Otogi, I’ve been assigned to White Dragon’s core engineering team. Nice to meet you.”

He held out his hand.

“San Francisco Shatterdome,” Seto said, picking up the bottle of soy sauce from the center of the table and dousing his bowl of brown rice. “You worked on Tyrant Dragon? For Ryuzaki and Haga?”

“That’s right,” Otogi said, slowly withdrawing his hand. Seto picked up an egg from his tray.

“A Jaeger now in pieces,” he said, cracking the egg firmly on the side of his bowl, “at the bottom of the Pacific.” 

Anger flashed across Otogi’s face. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Jesus effing Christ,” Rebecca muttered, on Mokuba’s other side, as Mokuba hissed, “ _Niisama._ ”

Seto dropped the egg into the rice with a flick of his wrist and cracked another. 

“I have no use for cast-offs from a Jaeger team that couldn’t get the job done,” he said, and jabbed his thumb at Mokuba. “My copilot just turned sixteen. I’d like him to see seventeen.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t feel so bad if _you_ didn’t see next week,” Otogi snapped, as Seto picked up his fork and began briskly beating the eggs into the rice. “Especially if this is the kind of bullshit your team has to put up with – ”

“Again, why would I want someone who built a Jaeger that failed – ”

“Seto, _stop_ – ”

“Attacking each other won’t do us any good. Don’t we have enough problems?” said the white-haired newcomer suddenly, in a soft, fragile voice, a voice that snared their attention like a spider’s web. Even Seto paused, his fork dripping with raw egg. This one looked around at them with large brown eyes, blinking uncertainly, as though surprised they noticed him. 

But he leaned forward, hands curled around his mug. Something hung from his neck, hidden under his sweater, the curves in the fabric suggesting some flat, round pendant. 

“We are all grieving for Ryuzaki and Haga, in our own different ways,” he said, in a level tone. His eyes drifted to Mokuba, then Seto. “I imagine Rangers feel it twice as hard.”

Otogi crossed his arms. “That doesn't mean he can just – ”

“But Otogi didn’t build Tyrant Dragon by himself,” the white-haired man said, still looking at Seto. “And he didn't destroy it, either. We are only doing what we can against the kaiju. That's why we're here, after all.”

“I need people who are doing their best against the kaiju,” Seto said. “Not people just ‘doing what we – ’”

“You aren’t the only one who's lost people to kaiju,” said the white-haired man, mildly, and yet almost everyone at the table seemed to retreat into themselves, sifting through their own memories for names, faces. 

“If I do my job right, I don't lose anyone,” Seto said, which earned him another nasty look from Otogi.

“So it was their own damn fault Ryuzaki and Haga died? Jackass.”

But the white-haired man gave Seto a faint, slender smile, a smile he did not like; his mouth had a resigned curve to it. Worse was the trace of pity, as though he knew something Seto did not.

“Everyone does, sooner or later.”

Everyone who lived and worked in a Shatterdome, with the ocean at their backs, had their own private superstitions. Pour a bottle into the sea every Sunday. Never sleep with your work clothes on. Watch the clouds, the thunderstorms, the changing light on the waves. Seto kept none of these stupid rites, and never had. They were all pointless, a pathetic surrendering to some ill-considered concept of fate. Why plead with a void, an empty universe, hoping to be heard? No one was going to answer. Every answer he needed, he could figure out himself.

But the man's words, for all their softness, were not a simple memento mori. They felt like a curse, closing around Seto's chest, squeezing like a fist. For a moment, he couldn't breathe, his body locking down against panic, his frustration racing everywhere and nowhere all at once. He wanted to take Mokuba and run. 

He settled for placing a hand secretly on Mokuba’s back, just to feel him warm and breathing beside him, flush with life and energy. Mokuba, still annoyed by his treatment of Otogi, shot him a low, narrow look. But he allowed it.

“Fatalism is spineless,” Seto said, at last. “If that’s the case, why not just roll over and die right now?”

“Too busy,” the man said cheerfully. “My name’s Ryou Bakura, I’m a kaiju behaviorist. So you see, there’s quite a lot to do, still.”

He took the pot of coffee. “Otogi? More coffee?”

With a sort of pointed, feline irritation, Otogi unfolded one arm and nudged his mug towards Bakura.

“...Ranger Kaiba?” Bakura said, and Seto scowled. 

“Whatever,” he said, shoving his mug across the table. He tugged his phone out of his pocket, scrolling mindlessly through emails as he ate. He was done with the conversation; he could gauge Otogi’s mettle as an engineer later. But he sure as hell was not going to exile himself from the breakfast table... especially a breakfast table in _his_ Shatterdome.

“Wait, hold on a sec. What kind of kaiju behavior is there other than smash, kill, destroy?” Rebecca said, and Bakura smiled, pouring himself a mug of coffee. 

“Well, let’s see… right after Insect Queen killed the Rangers, she started heading north, along the coast. She didn’t even touch San Francisco proper. Black Dragon met her on the road, as it were,” he said. “Your average kaiju likes to bludgeon its way around a city… Insect Queen did not. That’s new.”

“Why do you think she went north? Was she looking for something?” Mokuba offered, just as the same thoughts crossed Seto’s mind. He glanced up from his phone. 

Bakura shrugged. “Hard to say, they’re somewhat dense – ”

“Ooooh, is Kaiba-boy finally making _friends?_ ” A voice sang, a few feet away. Rebecca choked, spluttering with laughter into her glass of orange juice. Otogi grinned at her. 

With a noisy clatter, Seto threw his fork onto his tray. So much for breakfast. At this point, a Jaeger’s turbine was less noisy and aggravating than the mess hall, and it was too early in the day for Pegasus’ little digs. Seto stood up, bracing both hands on the table, the legs of the bench screeching against the floor as he shoved away. Pegasus cheerfully waved him down with a flap of his hand. 

“You’re so polite, Kaiba-boy. Don’t get up just for me,” Pegasus said, his silver hair swinging in long, silken strands around his face, half-obscuring his bizarre gold eye. “I just came by to let you know that Commander Ishtar is back and wants to chat. Report to LOCCENT at eleven and say hello.”

“Fine.” Seto dropped back onto the bench, determined not to give more than a second of thought to his late-night adjustments to White Dragon. Pegasus always seemed to know when he was hiding something.

“You too, Ranger Kaiba One,” Pegasus said, to Mokuba. “Do you think Ranger Kaiba Two here gets enough protein? He’s starting to look a little underf – ”

He stopped, his one eye fixed on Bakura. Bakura, fishing for raisins in his bowl of oatmeal, warily returned the gaze, his shoulders slouching inwards once more. But now Seto knew better. A swift, furtive glint crossed Bakura’s eyes – like a fish, darting in the shallows – and vanished just as fast. 

Pegasus himself wore an odd expression, eyebrows knitting together, mouth slightly open. That was also strange. He was never caught off guard by anybody. Seto, studying them over the rim of his mug, noted this, too, for his new mental folder on Bakura.

“Ah,” Pegasus said, and put on a broad, welcoming smile. “You two just came in from California, am I right?”

A graceful pivot. 

“Yeah, two days ago,” Otogi said. “I’m Otogi. This is Bakura.”

“Welcome to Domino! I’m Marshal Pegasus. My condolences for your loss at the San Francisco Shatterdome. I’m so happy to have you here with us,” Pegasus said. “Don’t let Kaiba-boy here bother you. He barks loud, but he only bites kaiju. He actually cares quite a lot, in his own way.”

“Are you done?” Seto snarled, heat rising to his face. Pegasus laughed.

“Yes, yes. Enjoy your breakfast,” he said, and walked away.

Otogi trained his green eyes on Pegasus’ retreating figure, leaning back to follow his path through the mess hall.

“How did he...” he asked, to no one in particular, and dragged one hand down his face. “God, I’m tired.”

Unruffled, Bakura plucked a raisin from his oatmeal, popping it into his mouth. Rebecca leaned forward, folding her arms on the table.

“So, your accent...”

Seto turned his attention back to his phone and Kaiba Corp, only half-listening, just in case Bakura stopped talking about himself and started talking about kaiju again. Rebecca’s first analysis of kaiju was not completely wrong, in his experience. Smash, kill, destroy. But if their behavior was changing… 

Well. He could handle that.

 

* * *

 

TIME: 1053. Seto went to Local Central Command, a long, dark room of consoles where Isis ran mission control. Neither Isis nor Mokuba were there yet, so he stood by the windows, drinking in the sweeping overhead view onto Hangar Bay 3 and White Dragon. 

He and Mokuba had fought eight kaiju. Their first White Dragon, a Mark III, had survived three of those kaiju and been decommissioned almost intact. The Mark IV White Dragon was battleworn, the white plates scratched and scuffed to a dim grey, but to Seto this only made her more beautiful. She had experience and grit. Mid-day light bounced off the sapphire-blue visor, lending a touch of cunning to her eyes. On her right shoulder, there was a large decal of a snarling, blue-eyed white dragon, with a barrel torso and long, knife-like wings. Pegasus’ idea, but Seto liked it anyway.

At White Dragon’s feet were a set of brand-new claws resting on truck beds, ready to be installed. The technicians, ant-sized from this height, had also opened the plates in her forearms for a routine service on the machinery. Once he was done with Isis, he’d go down there himself and get his hands dirty. 

“What's up, Ranger Kaiba Two,” Mokuba said, appearing at his elbow. Seto made a scathing noise. 

“It doesn’t even make sense. Why would you be Kaiba One? I’m _older_ ,” he said, switching to Japanese, which they spoke in private. Mokuba smirked. “Whatever. How's your schoolwork?” 

“I aced my anthro paper,” Mokuba said. Seto held out his fist and Mokuba gave it a smug tap. “But can you help me with math later? Professor Hawkins doesn’t really know how to explain calculus.”

“Hm. Disappointing. I’ll find a different tutor – ”

“That's not what I asked," Mokuba snapped. "I don’t _want_ a different tutor. He’s great with everything else. Why can’t you just – ”

His voice rose and he checked himself. The room was mostly empty save for a few officers at the consoles, heads bent towards the glittering holographic displays, absorbed in their work. Mokuba heaved a sigh. “I just want you to help me with math. That’s it.”

He folded his arms in a tight knot, gazing across the hangar at White Dragon. 

“Of course I’ll help you with math,” Seto said. Mokuba said nothing, because that was not the issue, and they both knew it. His unfinished sentence hung in the air between them. The rest of it was in the Drift, probably, doomed to be unnamed, untouched. Seto wanted to kick himself. He was tired of Mokuba’s frustration, circling itself in endless loops, tracing the same paths over and over; he was tired of standing at the heart of it. But he didn’t even know how to...

“Rangers Kaiba,” Isis said. They turned around to see her sailing towards them past the consoles, short and slender, her glossy black hair in an elegant chignon with two long strands dangling in front of her ears. She held a tablet in one hand.

A gold necklace glinted around her neck, with the same symbol as Pegasus’ false eye. Seto assumed it was some emblem from their long history together in the Defense Corps. She had also been a Ranger, once, and despite her role in making them Rangers, he did not dislike her. Like Pegasus, she never seemed taken by surprise – invaluable to Seto when he was hooked up to the rig in White Dragon, face to face with several thousand tons of towering, reptilian kaiju.

Isis graced them with a regal smile, her features cast in shadow by the faint light of the consoles. “I trust you're well.”

“Did you have a good trip? Did you get to see your brothers?” Mokuba said, all traces of his sour mood gone, and her smile turned warm. 

“I did, thank you, Mokuba. They wish you both the best,” she said. “So do the other Rangers. Ranger Jounouchi says he’s coming for your kill record.” 

Seto snorted. “In a scrap heap like Black Dragon? Not a chance.”

Losing Ryuzaki and Haga had forced a reassessment of the five remaining Jaeger teams. Isis’ trip had taken her around the Pacific Rim: Vivian Wong and Kujaku “Valentine” Mai, in Hong Kong with Harpy Phoenix, Valon and Amelda in Sydney, piloting Stone Fortress, Honda Hiroto and Jounouchi Katsuya in Black Dragon out of Anchorage, and her own brothers, Malik and Rishid, in Lima, piloting her old Jaeger, Tomb Keeper. 

Every once in a while they were all dumped into a conference call together, to debrief on strategy or J-tech or territories, and every single time Seto walked away with the distinct impression that Jounouchi was the most frivolous of the lot. The rest took it seriously.

“Yes, about that,” Isis said. “Given that we’re stretched… even thinner now, we can’t wait on Jaeger upgrades. Everyone should be in Mark IVs by the end of the year.”

“Kaiba Corp can handle it,” Seto said, with no small pride.

“I'm delighted to hear it,” Isis said. “As you know, the PPDC leaves no stone unturned in our fight against the kaiju – ”

“I can think of at least a few,” Seto said.  

“What other stones would you have us turn over?” she said coolly.

“We dump almost all the R&D funding into building stronger Jaegers, and not nearly enough into anything else,” he said, his tone heating up. “What's the point of developing so much weaponry if we're not also developing knowledge? Monsters are crawling out of a different dimension, but we don't do _anything_ except sit around and wait for them to knock on our fucking door. It's unsustainable. It's _idiotic_. Kaiba Corp has more than enough resources to – ”

He stopped. Isis was smiling, a faint twitch of her lips. Seto exhaled and braced his hands on his hips.

“More than enough resources for what I assume is a little side project,” he finished, and Isis’ smile widened. She unlocked her tablet, pulling up an image of a massive stone stele, and offered it to them. He took the side of the tablet with one hand as Mokuba’s hand met the other side, centering it between them.

“Look familiar?” she said, as he enlarged the image. It was an ancient, weathered stone, covered in hieroglyphics and engraved with harsh, indistinct forms. A large crack splintered across the face. The more he looked, the more the forms took shape, oddly familiar, looming out of some half-remembered dream…

“Wait, they look like kaiju,” Mokuba said, and now Seto saw them clearly: huge, muscular monsters, hewn in rough chisel marks, like they'd carved themselves into the stone. “What _is_ this?”

“Some fishermen found it in the waters off the coast of Libya,” Isis said. “The writing on the stele describes beasts that come from the sea and wreak havoc on the land… it leans towards apocalyptic. I’d like to investigate.”

Seto raised his eyebrows. “Investigate what, exactly?”

“If it’s history or prophecy,” she said. “Either way, we develop some knowledge.”

Damn her and her annoying little traps. But he was not so easy to back into a wall.

“Yes, either some stoned oracle made a lucky guess, or the kaiju smashed an ancient civilization to pieces,” he said, yielding the tablet to Mokuba and crossing his arms. “I'll support serious, scientific endeavors to study the kaiju. Not some myths written on a crumbling rock.”

“Well, _I'm_ curious,” Mokuba said. “Send me a proposal, and I'll send it along to the right people.”

Seto shot him a look; Mokuba countered with a sweet smile, sharpened with sly humor.

“Is that why you wanted to see us both? So you can get a yes even when I say no?” Seto said.

“No, because you’re a team,” Isis said patiently, tugging an invisible wrinkle out of the cuff of her sleeve. “It was good to spend some time with my brothers. It reaffirmed some things for me, especially after Ryuzaki and Haga… none of us are doing this alone. We _can’t_ do this alone, especially Rangers.”

Her hand drifted idly to her necklace, and she smiled at Mokuba.

“Whatever happens, don’t let him forget it,” she said, nodding her head at Seto, and Mokuba grinned.

“I won’t,” he said, as Seto rolled his eyes. He was everyone’s favorite villain today.

“Excellent,” she said, taking her tablet back from Mokuba. “Mokuba, I’ll send you a proposal by the end of the day. Thank you for your time, Rangers.”

“Commander Ishtar,” Seto said, with a curt nod. She turned and left, half-illuminated in hazy colors by the lights from the consoles. He gazed at White Dragon, his thoughts trailing silently in the wake of her exit, stone steles and old myths and Jaeger upgrades, all drifting together. This high up, the sounds of the hangar floor came to them as a dull, flat droning, punctuated by muffled clangs, the beeping of a truck as it backed up. 

It didn’t matter what some long-dead civilization had to say about kaiju. The question was how to fight them _now_. 

He turned to Mokuba, smiling. Mokuba gave him a questioning look.

“What did she say? I wasn't listening,” he said, and accepted Mokuba’s light smack to the arm with a smirk. Can't do it alone? Pure sentimental claptrap, disguising the most fundamental flaw in the neural interface. Nothing more than a joke.

 

* * *

 

TIME: 1623. White Dragon’s new claws were successfully installed, honed to fine points, glinting in the late summer sunlight. The machinery in her forearms was performing up to standards (Seto’s standards, higher than mandated.) All Kaiba Corp business was wrapped up for the day, and Isono was running everything smoothly, per his instructions. Seto took advantage of the lull in work and went to the Shatterdome’s main hangar, slipping into the back of an unused helicopter. He stretched out on his back across the jump seats. Time for a nap. No one ever thought to look for him here, except Mokuba and Isis and Pegasus, and if they were looking for him, then it was important. 

He set an alarm on his phone and closed his eyes. The inside of the helicopter was warm, comfortably so, and he relished the silence. All they did was wait. And yet, after three years in a Shatterdome, he wasn't stupid enough to complain about a dull afternoon.

 

* * *

 

TIME: 2147. Seto stood before a whiteboard in one of the rec lounges, blue marker squeaking in protest at the speed of his writing.

“...and that's how you find a partial derivative,” he said, turning to Mokuba, tapping the math on the board with the marker. The lounge was quiet, with the TV on low volume and the ping-pong table untouched. A blonde J-tech engineer lay on the couch, reading her book. They had this corner of the room to themselves, with Mokuba's schoolwork spread across a coffee table.

“Okay. I think I got it. Give me a set,” Mokuba said. Seto wrote out a half-dozen problems on the board and gave Mokuba the marker.  
  
He stood in front of the board, holding his elbow, gaze moving thoughtfully between the problems and Seto's example. Seto waited, hands on his hips, ready to give him all the time in the world. It was a joy to let him figure it out on his own, unpressured.  
  
Slowly, Mokuba wrote out the partial derivatives, one by one, brow furrowed with concentration. With a swift, graceful series of strokes, he drew a dragon in the corner of the white board, firing a flaming beam of light at the problem set; then he set it on fire, punctuating his work with a confident scrawl of his name.

Seto smirked as he took the marker, circling each correct answer. It was all correct.  
  
“Well done,” Seto said, punctuating with a click of the marker cap, and Mokuba beamed. “See? You can do this. Let's try something more complica – ”  
  
The lights went off, plunging them into pitch black darkness  
  


  
  


  
– and came back on, dim and red, to the wailing of a siren.  
  
Isis’ voice mingled with the siren, as serene as glass. “All personnel report to battle stations. Anti-kaiju operations are now in progress. Rangers Kaiba report to LOCCENT for immediate deployment. I repeat: Rangers Kaiba report to LOCCENT for – ”  
  
They were already running, tearing out of the lounge towards Hangar Bay 3. They were not the only ones. The hallways were filling with people sprinting towards their posts, all of them giving Seto and Mokuba a wide berth as they went flying past, boots thumping in tandem on the concrete floors.  
  
Within minutes they were in the prep chamber on one of the highest levels of the Shatterdome, shedding their clothes and wriggling into the tight grey undersuits. The team of suit technicians was already there, unloading their ice-white Ranger Drivesuits from the glass and steel cases, firing up the monitoring screens.  
  
Seto moved through the process with practiced ease, tucking his dog tags and his locket down the front of his undersuit and stepping into the center of the prep chamber in one smooth, liquid motion. No sooner did he come to a stop than the technicians moved in, fastening the white pieces of the Drivesuit over him, everything clicking together with mechanical pops and hisses.  
  
“Thanks, Guillermo,” Mokuba said, standing beside him, as Guillermo pressed the long, centipede-like interface conduit, the Spinal Clamp, to the back of his spine.  
  
“No problem, kid. You ready to kick some ass?” Guillermo said, holding out his fist.  
  
Mokuba grinned and bumped his gloved fist against Guillermo’s.  
  
“You know I am. Thanks, Kazuki,” he said, as Kazuki gave him his helmet, the plexiglass shield full of a viscous fluid, tinged sickly green by the orichalchorite compounds. He never failed to thank the technicians. Seto preferred to wait until the fight was over, and they were home –  
  
He braced himself as Guillermo snapped his own Spinal Clamp into his undersuit’s spinal ports – an unsettling, skittering flash of pain, like a thousand insect legs needling through his skin – and then a sudden, soft heat. He put on his helmet and latched the seal to the stiff collar of his chestplate.  
  
 _Data on helmet. Data relay gel dispersing in circuitry suit,_ said a robotic voice in his ear. The green data gel drained from the helmet into the spinal circuitry.  
  
“You’re good to go,” Kazuki said. They strode heavily into the dark, oval Conn Pod, to their stilt-like piloting rigs, clipping their boots into the braces, clamping the grip controls to their wrists. After hooking them into the rigs, Kazuki and Guillermo made a hasty exit, closing the hatch door with a resounding thud of finality. 

Seto rolled his shoulders, twisted at the waist, testing his freedom of movement, and looked sideways at Mokuba. He was not calm so much as he was focused, flexing his hands around the controls, eyes trained forward. The interior of White Dragon’s visor flared to life with holographic displays of maps and graphs. Deployment number nine.

“Marshal Pegasus on deck,” Isis said, though the radio.  
  
“Hiya, Kaiba-boys. Your target is a kaiju currently fourteen miles offshore, coming in hot towards our very own town of Domino. Your orders are to eliminate it,” Pegasus said, voice filling the Conn Pod. A pause. “We are classing it at a Category Five.”

Mokuba glanced at Seto.  
  
Seto reached up and hit the radio, hanging between the rigs. “Boring. Don't you have something a little more challenging?”

“That’s the spirit. Engage drop, Commander Ishtar.”  
  
“Engaging drop,” she said.  
  
“White Dragon is prepared for drop,” Seto said.  
  
The Conn Pod, suspended on rails several stories above White Dragon’s main body, released and slid riotously down the rails, slamming into the neck with a force that rocketed through Seto’s body. He staggered forward in the rig, his heart in his throat.  
  
“Coupling confirmed,” Isis said. “White Dragon is launching from Hangar Bay 3.”  
  
White Dragon began to move, rolling out of the hangar into the hot, thick summer night. A pair of helicopters hovered into view overhead, spotlighting their path into the harbor waters, the staccato _chop-chop-chop_ of their rotors drowned out by the roar of White Dragon’s vortex turbine. The siren was still going.  
  
“Pilot-to-pilot protocol engaging,” Isis said. “Prepare for neural handshake in T minus fifteen, fourteen...”  
  
To Seto’s left, Mokuba reached up and muted their side of the radio, his expression framed in the teal green light of the helmet, tight but resolute.  
  
“Niisama. Before you get in my head,” he said. “I love you.”  
  
The inside of the helmet magnified the sound of Seto’s breathing, a thick, dry crackle in his ears. He never knew how he felt about drifting, about the heady flow of unchecked memory and emotion – it revealed too much, things that were better left alone to rot, abandoned in the dark.  
  
 _I love you_ , spoken aloud _:_ a shield against them.  
  
“Nine, eight, seven…”

His tongue was stuck in his mouth, a dead weight.

“I know you feel the same. I'll feel it now,” Mokuba said, and before Seto could muster the words to give him just a fraction of what he deserved – 

“Three, two, one. Neural handshake initiated,” Isis said.  
  
A brightness bloomed in the center of his head, hurtling out in every direction, like the birth of a star. And then Mokuba was there, equally bright, flooding him with a dizzying mix of adrenaline and a childish flickering of excitement and fear for himself and fear for Seto and a sizzling, electrified determination to fight and fight and fight and _win_ and again fear of the kaiju, like a kick to the stomach, and a rage to protect his friends and everyone at the Shatterdome, to see them all make it out alive – 

And, stronger than any of it, he trusted his brother. It slid through Seto, sharp and graceful, a bayonet. _I don’t deserve_

Seto bit it back, hid it as best he could. They were in the Drift. That was just the surface.  
  
“Neural handshake, strong and holding,” Isis said.

 

* * *

 

But the neural interface was incomplete without Cortex KSRA-8, the artificial intelligence at the heart of White Dragon. 

She was lurking somewhere below their shared memories, which twisted and spun through their heads, kaleidoscopic: long hours in his Kaiba Corp office, breaking apart into smoky fractals of Gozaburo and his red suit, the choking, ashy smell of cigar smoke – fragments of warm afternoons in an empty classroom with a worn-down chessboard, its center collapsing into – Mokuba shaking him awake in the study, years ago, hushed and urgent – splintering into a playground at dusk, and a promise. 

Seto dove past them all, searching for White Dragon. He didn't care to re-live them and never chased RABITs. And drifting made a mirror out of Mokuba, reflecting his own apprehension back to him in quick, nervous pulses. He needed White Dragon, _now_.

She found him first, with a silent rush of recognition. She always found him first. In his wake, she found Mokuba, too. 

Seto inhaled, taking her in like cold, crisp air through his lungs. A renewed clarity of purpose sliced through the morass of memory and feeling. “Right hemisphere is calibrating.”

“Left hemisphere is calibrating,” Mokuba said.  
  
“Excellent. Now go crash that kaiju’s party,” Pegasus said. The display map showed the kaiju moving southwest out of the ocean towards Domino. White Dragon plotted an intercept point in the shallow waters of the coast north of the Shatterdome. Ten minutes to intercept.  
  
Without saying anything – they didn’t have to – Seto and Mokuba trudged forward in their rigs. White Dragon plunged hip-deep into the sea, breaking the water with each movement of her massive legs. 

With each step, Seto held tighter to White Dragon. She held tighter to him, light racing through his nerves, clearing out every dark spot of doubt and corruption as she went. Their connection was strong tonight, as strong as it had ever been: her footsteps on the seafloor thudding through his legs, the cold sea winds sweeping over his face. A tremendous energy coiled in his muscles, waiting.

Did Pegasus know, when he and Cecilia designed the first Jaeger, that it would feel like this? A boundary, broken, between mind and machine? He’d persuaded Seto not to fight his own Ranger draft until after he met KSRA-8 for real, through a neural interface, instead of a simple adoption test. Now Seto was here, suited up and linked in, walking White Dragon through the ocean waves like he was born for it.

Maybe he was. White Dragon flooded Seto with a strange power: chaotic, unscientific, almost divine, like he’d stolen fire from the gods themselves. A sublime bristling against every force that had ever tried to check or control him. He was going to fight and he was going to _win_ . Pegasus knew. He _knew_. Did every Ranger feel like this in their Jaeger?

And any minute now, Seto’s update to the neural load limiters would kick in. 

They reached the intercept point, the lights of Domino glittering on the coast just south of them.

“You should have eyes on it by now,” Isis said.  
  
In the distance, past where the ocean blended seamlessly into night, the helicopters’ searchlights began to trace a huge, monstrous, seething shape, emerging from the blackness. 

Then it was there, only a few hundred yards away and revealed in full, looming in the light of White Dragon’s beams. Taller than White Dragon, it had a lumbering figure – someone’s heavy, hunching nightmare, with three round, mask-like faces on three long, tapering heads, like horns, clustered on a single neck. Slices of white bone jutted out of its scaly orange skin, from its neck down the length of its torso, and its thick arms ended in claws. It stared at White Dragon, unblinking. No – at _them_ , as though seeing them through the visor, and knowing them. 

Mokuba sucked in a sharp breath, his fear spiking through Seto. He was sixteen. He was the youngest Ranger ever. Ryuzaki and Haga were dead. 

Seto did not look away. White Dragon was in his veins now, an intoxication. A kaiju was just another beast. “Visual confirmed.”

“Ooh, it’s so ugly,” Pegasus said. “How do you feel about ‘Des Gardius’ as a code name?”

“Don’t care. White Dragon is engaging,” Seto said, and thrust forward on the controls. 

White Dragon charged, closing the distance in seconds. She dropped her shoulder, slamming it hard into Des Gardius’ chest, knocking it off balance. It stumbled in the water, its three faces swinging towards them with matching expressions of annoyance. Seto laughed, low and satisfied. Awash in the glow of his confidence, Mokuba’s unease began to recede.

“You stupid, useless reptile,” Seto growled. “Are you supposed to be scary? You comic book reject freak?”

“It can’t hear you,” Mokuba said, smiling.

Des Gardius launched itself at White Dragon, moving into perfect range for a swift uppercut to the central head. The blow rocketed through White Dragon, making the Conn Pod tremble, and Des Gardius staggered backwards again, unleashing shrill, ear-splitting screeches of rage. 

Seto smiled with relish. His preferred strategy was to hit first, hit hard, and keep hitting – what was the point of traps or tricks, when White Dragon was this powerful? No sooner did he plan the next blow than the plan was already in Mokuba’s head, faster than instinct, and no sooner than that was White Dragon moving forward again, digging into Des Gardius with her claws and sweeping her foot into its leg, toppling it sideways into the waves. 

Overhead, the helicopters whirled around them. Bright blue kaiju blood bubbled up from the wounds, drifted on the water, dripped off the shining claws.

“Burst cannon seventy-five percent charged,” Mokuba said. 

“Don’t worry. This is already over,” Seto said, as White Dragon raised her clasped fists high overhead and swung down – she clipped Des Gardius hard in the shoulder as it scrambled and twisted in the water, screeching, kicking up waves – one kick caught White Dragon hard in the leg. Both Seto and Mokuba lurched in their rigs, the pain bursting through them, trickling away. A minor blow. They recovered in seconds, White Dragon advancing on Des Gardius once more – 

She faltered. A loud, slow stutter, jolting through her frame. 

“My controls aren’t responding,” Mokuba said. 

“What?” Seto said. Mokuba’s confusion crashed through him, obliterating every thought except one: _neural load limiters_. It rang in Mokuba’s head. 

His fear seized Seto, ice-cold and paralyzing. They stared at each other, unable to look away.

“What did you d – ”

Des Gardius thrust a hand into White Dragon’s head, claws smashing through the hull and the visor with an enormous splintering of glass and metal. At the same time, driven by instinct, Seto ducked, tilting White Dragon hard to the right – there was a loud shout of pain and a _CRUNCH_ and panic exploding through him, Mokuba’s – shards of the Conn Pod flying around him – Isis and Pegasus yelling through the radio, he didn’t know what – a release in his core, like a wire snapping, whipping through him.

When he lifted his head, heart pounding in his mouth, the Conn Pod’s visor was shattered, the side of the hull crumpled inwards, the interior exposed to the black night air. That was part of Des Gardius’ clawed hand where Mokuba was supposed to be – and Mokuba was pinned to the back of the Pod, in a tangle of bent, dented rigging and crumpled metal, dwarfed by the size of the claws that trapped him there.

“Niisama,” he grunted, still alive, still kicking – screaming through his teeth as the claw _moved_ , with a grinding screech of metal, a dull, muffled cracking. Des Gardius was trying to rip through the side of White Dragon’s head.

“We lost neural handshake,” Isis said, but Seto knew that already. Mokuba was gone from his head, with only a weak, collapsing darkness left behind. The terror that gripped him, sweating, breathless, was his own. This wasn’t supposed to happen –

There was no time for that. White Dragon was pouring into Seto, scorching and brilliant. His nerves were aflame; his skin was searing hot. At any moment, she threatened to implode like a star and take him with her, swallow him whole, from the inside out. A fracturing – his veins detaching, bones melting to a heavy sludge in his limbs, his own name cracking apart into nonsense sounds. Every thought made of smoke, lacy and fragile, pulled apart by her tremendous gravity. 

But Seto held fast to the connection, steeling himself with what remained and fighting to keep it – he wouldn’t lose her, lose himself to her, lose _Mokuba_ – 

She relented, and loosened her grip. 

He inhaled, his mouth dry. Everything still burned. The Drivesuit was a furnace. But now he could think.

“I got you,” he said. White Dragon grabbed Des Gardius’ forearm, digging her claws in until they punctured the flesh, and ripped it open. Blue kaiju blood welled up from the gashes, steaming, dripping onto White Dragon’s claws and chestplate. Des Gardius shrieked with agony, releasing its grip on Mokuba and the shell of the Conn Pod. 

Mokuba gasped as the claws retracted, sagging in the wreckage of his rigging. His right arm hung limply at his side, the gauntlet cracked and splintered. 

Seto twisted in the rigging, trying to turn around, desperate to reach him. With forced calm, Pegasus said, “Rangers, there’s no shame in hitting the emergency eject – ”

“No!” Mokuba yelled, face crumpling with pain. “We have to fight!”

Every inch of Seto’s body was vibrating with fury and fear, like nothing he’d known before, but he knew Mokuba was right. Insect Queen had left San Francisco untouched, but that was no guarantee Des Gardius would do the same. Hundreds of people in the Shatterdome. Millions of people in Domino! He still had control of White Dragon. They needed him to fight. They needed him to _win_. He looked forward, the stiff front of his Ranger suit straining tightly against his heaving chest.

The sea winds howled through the Conn Pod. The broken visor framed Des Gardius in jagged shards of glass, so close that its green eyes glinted with light from White Dragon. A low, hoarse breathing rattled out of its three mouths, and it tucked its injured forearm close to the chest. Blue blood ran in long streams down its arm, dripping off its elbow into the sea.

“Kaiba… somehow, you’re carrying ninety-six percent of the neural load,” Pegasus said. A spark of triumph flared through Seto. He’d been right all along. 

It was a small feeling. Everything was White Dragon, blazing inside him like a star, and Des Gardius, leering at him with all six hateful eyes, all three gaping mouths, and Mokuba, still alive but completely unreachable. 

“Status. Burst cannon,” was all he managed to say. Des Gardius had shattered the visual displays.

“Ninety-four percent ch – Kaiba!” Isis shouted, just as Des Gardius lowered its heads, like a bull, and charged. It slammed the brunt of its long head against White Dragon’s chest, a deafening crash of bony head against metal, almost knocking her off her feet. Seto heaved on the controls, the impact thundering like a train through his chest. She righted herself, in slender harmony with him.

He took White Dragon several staggering steps back, away from Des Gardius. 

“I’m fine,” he said, panting. “Mokuba?”

No response. He looked over his shoulder. Mokuba lay half-slumped, half-curled in the back of the Conn Pod, almost cocooned in what remained of his rigging. His face was hidden by the angle of his helmet, the seams of his right gauntlet dark red. A stone of dread dropped in Seto’s gut.

“Mokuba, answer me!”

“We’re still getting signals from his suit,” Isis said, quickly. “You took heavy structural damage to the turbine. You can’t take another hit like that. Kill it fast and bring him home.”

He swallowed, his mouth dry. “Understood.”

“You can do it.”

 _Of course I can. I have to do it_ , he wanted to say, and her faith in him was irrelevant. He was no stranger to fighting at a disadvantage. But if he lost his footing, in any way – if his willpower wavered for a fraction of a second – Des Gardius, or White Dragon, would kill them both. Just this once, he did not push back. Once she and Pegasus realized this mess was his doing...

Seto took another shaky breath. He needed to focus. He needed to hit Des Gardius with the full force of the burst cannon, in exactly the right spot. He exhaled, forcing every emotion down. 

“Burst cannon,” he said again.

“Ninety-eight percent.”

“Alright,” he said. “I’m going to take all those fucking heads off.”

A shot through the neck with the burst cannon. Des Gardius’ long neck, exposed and unprotected. How? 

A headlock. That risked White Dragon’s arm _._ Don’t flinch. Des Gardius, looking up. Get White Dragon under Des Gardius. No, that risked all of White Dragon. He didn’t want to jostle Mokuba, but there was no way around that. He’d always been full of nerve. Sang-froid. Do it when Des Gardius charged again.  

It slouched towards him, warily, its chest burgeoning against the ridges of bone with each rattling breath. _If_ it charged again. He didn’t move. Let Des Gardius think he’d dropped his guard. Let it believe he’d had enough. Deceive the opponent. Manipulate them. White Dragon was the center of the endgame. Always control the center.

“Burst cannon is at a hundred percent,” Isis said. “Listen – ” 

Seto turned off the radio. 

He breathed, once, twice, until it was deep and even. The night yawned around him, crisp and black. Domino City glittered in the distance, a thin seam of light, miles away. When did they get all the way to the cliffs? White Dragon was still with him. Des Gardius’ six eyes darted over him, bracing its shoulders, hinting at movement. 

Come on, he thought. _Attack me._

It dropped its heads and charged. 

Another thunderous crash as Des Gardius’ central head slammed into White Dragon’s chest, turning his bones to dust – just as White Dragon hooked one arm behind the horned heads, locking Des Gardius in place against her. Seto and White Dragon yanked, twisting Des Gardius’ heads to the side, exposing a long stretch of bony, orange neck. Des Gardius screamed, a hideous, shattering sound, and shoved against the seafloor, pushing them back towards the cliffs – 

White Dragon’s back thudding into the cliffs with a crunch of rock. She tucked her other arm between herself and Des Gardius, pressing into the neck. Her hand bloomed open, flower-like, revealing the white-hot barrel of the burst cannon. 

“Got you, you piece of shit,” Seto snarled. His whole body rang with the command: _strike!_

White Dragon struck with the full force of his rage, unleashing a blinding bright stream of destruction from the cannon. All the fire she'd built up inside him came tearing out. A concentrated lightning ripped through the night, followed by the cannon’s throaty roar, obliterating all sense of color and sound. All he saw was searing white. Des Gardius’ neck swelled and burst, disintegrating like tissue paper around White Dragon’s beam. 

It was dead. It had to be dead. Still, Seto did not let up, even when the weight of its heads slackened on his arm, and several klaxons went off, warning him about high levels of kaiju blood and structural damage, and the body began to droop – White Dragon wielded the cannon’s beam like a sword, slicing Des Gardius from shoulder to hip. The Conn Pod filled with the acrid smell of kaiju blood, a sizzle of burning reptilian flesh. Total victory demanded total defeat.

The beam thinned, narrowing to a needle point… and at last, winked out. 

White Dragon shook the heads off her arm and shoved the headless body aside. It slumped into the water with a heavy splash, the sea frothing with bright, toxic blood. 

Seto blinked as his sight returned to him, his hearing cleared of the roar of White Dragon’s cannon. His legs shook, threatening to buckle beneath him.

The engine turbine was whining, an unpleasant, stuttering keen of metal. Their connection was fading fast, the turbine’s exertions grinding in his torso, an ache spreading through him. With a deep pang of regret, he realized White Dragon was not going to make it back to the Shatterdome. 

There was a beach by the cliff, a sandy cove. White Dragon peeled off the cliff and tilted into the cove, slowly, bracing one hand in the shallows, landing on her side with a long metallic groan. He reached forward to the control panel, flipping rapidly through the switches and dials of the turbine sealing sequence. 

The engine fell silent. White Dragon went dark around him and inside him, slipping away, leaving only a lingering sadness. His thoughts settled, as quiet and empty as the smoking crater after a massive collision.

Seto popped the seal on his helmet and pulled it off, his hair clinging to his forehead, his face, damp with sweat. He inhaled, taking in a lungful of fresh sea air, his first breath in an eternity. Everything around him was awash in nocturnal shades of grey-blue, a midnight calm. Like waking up from a long, fantastical dream, and finding the world intact, everything still in place.

Most of it, anyway. The Conn Pod was at an angle, the floor sloping towards the gap in the shattered visor. Several meters below the gap, waves rolled in slow rhythm towards the shore, a gentle, hushed sound. 

He struggled briefly with his rigging. Finally, he unhooked himself and climbed up to the back of the Conn Pod. Mokuba still lay inside the crumpled bird’s nest of his rigging, blood seeping through the cracks of his white gauntlet. A knot tightened in Seto’s throat as he took off his gloves and tapped the side of Mokuba’s helmet with his fingertips, calling up a readout from the Spinal Clamp. 

The display glowed green on the clear surface, illuminating Mokuba’s face in the blue darkness: spinal column intact, well-protected by the well-armored back plates. A tourniquet band in the undersuit had successfully activated just below his right bicep. Seto really needed to thank the suit technicians. Every single one. 

With hollow hands, drained of all their strength, he took off Mokuba's helmet and slid two fingers under his jaw. An insistent pulse, thumping under his soft, sweating skin. Fast.

“Mokuba,” Seto said, cradling his face in both hands. “Mokuba? Open your eyes. Please. Look at me.”

Mokuba’s legs shifted beneath him, somewhere in the wreckage, faint and tentative. His eyes fluttered open, found Seto.

“Niisama,” he breathed, ragged. “I want to go home.”

“I'm taking you there,” Seto said, a tremendous weight lifting from his body, although he had no idea which home Mokuba wanted. “I’m going to move you now, okay? We’re going to wait for evac on the beach.”

“Nngh,” was Mokuba’s only reply, as Seto gingerly disentangled him from the rigging and pulled him free. Carefully, he slid one arm under Mokuba’s knees, the other around his shoulders, gathering him up, flinching with guilt at Mokuba's every grunt of pain.

With Mokuba cradled safely in his arms, he slid towards the gap in the visor, skidding his boots along the floor. With several strong horse kicks, he snapped away a jutting shard of glass, cleaning the gap. 

Then, with deliberate calm, he swung his legs over the edge, tightened his grip on Mokuba, and dropped into the water with a splash. It was shallow, only chest-deep, and warm. Drifting around them were tendrils of kaiju blood, like strange, bright blue lace. He trudged to shore, small waves swelling and breaking around him, each crest nudging him onwards. 

The waves rolled and flattened, fanning open around Seto’s boots. The sand crunched softly underfoot. He knelt on the dry sand and laid Mokuba flat, as gently as possible, tilting his head down to hear Mokuba’s determined breathing. 

“We won?” Mokuba said.

“We did,” Seto said, brushing Mokuba’s cheek with his thumb. “We’re the best.”

Despite White Dragon’s enormous body, blocking their view of Domino, and the foul, raw smell of Des Gardius’ corpse out of sight beyond the cliff, the beach was peaceful and quiet. The sky was clear and cloudless and black, dusted with stars. Shrubs, nestled in the cliffside, stirred in the breeze. The serene isolation reminded him of the vacation house down south, with its airy, light-filled rooms and ocean views, the balcony drenched in sunlight. Gozaburo had almost never used it; his ghost left no traces there. As a home, that was a good choice. 

But they hadn’t been there in years. Rangers were rarely granted leave. Seto would be fine right here on the sand, with the rhythm of the waves lulling him to sleep. 

“You’re going to be okay. Everyone is going to be okay,” he said.

“Are you?” Mokuba said. 

Seto opened his mouth, but found no answer.

A helicopter descended noisily onto the beach, several dozen yards away. A small team of paramedics swarmed out of the cabin, running towards them, black shadows moving through the blinding halo of the searchlights. As they stabilized Mokuba and loaded him onto a stretcher, one of the paramedics tried to start inspecting Seto; he shoved him away.

"Just go! Get him out of here!" he said, desperate not to delay Mokuba’s treatment any longer. 

So as quickly as they arrived, they left. Just like that, Seto was left standing on the sand, watching the helicopter rise and vanish into the night. The beach slipped back into silence and calm, the small waves rolling in and out, in and out, closer and closer to the toes of his boots. 

Without White Dragon, he was exhausted. It was the only thing he felt, like a tenfold increase in gravity, his body threatening to buckle under the weight of it. Every other feeling was still in the Drift, all the terror and rage and victory. They were all going to come back later, slinking out of the dark like small creatures, making their way home again. They always did. 

Exhaustion, and a terrifying clarity, honed to a point by the starlit solitude. Blood and seawater dripped down his Drivesuit, running together in long tracks. The Mark IV White Dragon was almost destroyed. Mokuba was injured, to what extent still unknown. Seto had shouldered almost the entire neural load and taken down the kaiju, all by himself. Just what he wanted. 

The sky was empty. And if no one came for him?

He waited, alone on the beach. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me at work: ...so I have to merge the code in order to deploy it?  
> software engineer: yep. are you learning how to code?  
> me: no.  
> software engineer:  
> me: :)  
>  
> 
> thank you for reading! kudos and/or reviews are very welcome!
> 
> Chapter 3 will be posted towards the end of August. [S. Kaiba has entered the chat.]


	3. Zero Sum Total

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "That bad,” Mokuba growled. “And that’s what you want. To fight off the monsters and the machines. Doing it all on your own and getting killed, or worse, because it’s better than sharing the load.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for the lovely reviews and kudos! glad everyone is enjoying reading this, because i really enjoy writing it. i'll respond to reviews soon :)
> 
> now it's time to expose you all to two of my most hideous kinks: completely platonic clothing removal, and water as an emotionally fraught psychological space.

The flight from the beach only took ten minutes, maybe fifteen at most. But it passed dream-like, every second stretching for hours, until the only place that ever existed and would ever exist was the dim, noisy, claustrophobic cabin of a military helicopter. Seto's very own pocket of eternity: nothing before, nothing after. Only a relentless hurtling through an unknown space towards some unknown destination.

He allowed the paramedics to give him a cursory inspection. No concussions, no sprains or fractures, no other injuries. Nothing more dramatic than the standard post-drift migraine, a thick rail spike moving slowly through his head. He did not allow the suit technicians to take off the Drivesuit, jerking his arm out of their grasp with a terse command. _Don’t touch me._ The thought of their hands moving over him, prying the pieces off his body, was insufferable. How much would they remove? How far down would they go? The kaiju blood dulled to a cool blue, tracing thin, sticky seams across his torso, down his legs. There was an empty jumpseat between him and the nearest paramedic, a gap, a void. _Is this all you're made of?_

The helicopter landed. Before anyone else had a chance to move, Seto threw the door open with a forceful clang of metal against metal and jumped out, his Ranger boots crunching the ground. Mokuba was in the doctors’ hands now, but he needed to know – he’d waited long enough on the beach, not one of the paramedics could tell him anything – how much damage he’d done –

Light spilled out of the open doors of the Shatterdome’s main hangar, a wide swath flooding through the night. He had not taken a dozen steps before Isis materialized out of nowhere, striding towards him with helicopter gusts whipping her hair around her face. She wore a tight, urgent expression. So soon? There was no way they’d retrieved White Dragon’s black box or her Cortex this fast, no way they’d found out yet – a thousand possible questions raced through his head, with a thousand answers for each one. Explanations. Defenses. Counter-attacks. _Is this the best you can do?_ He clenched his jaw. He was not going to stop for her, and he was not going to answer any questions. All of that could fucking wait.

But for the second time that night, his plan backfired. The rail spike reached the other side of his head and burst. Nausea welled up in the back of his mouth and he staggered, clutching his head with one hand. Isis caught him easily by the upper arm.

“Hands off,” he hissed, grimacing, but she tightened her grip, both holding him up and keeping him in place.

“For heaven’s sake, Kaiba. You look half-dead and you’re still in your Drivesuit,” she said. “Did they just sit on their hands the entire time?”

“Commander Ishtar,” one of the paramedics said, as she left the helicopter. Isis turned. “He refused.”

Isis’ falcon-like gaze shot back to Seto. For a moment, she studied him, below the diminishing noise of the helicopter. Overhead, the blades whuffed the air, each rotation slower than the last. He stared back at her, swallowing, determined not to give into nausea. The flight deck was buzzing with flight crews, prepping the aerial cranes to go retrieve White Dragon. _I expected more than this._ The last thing he needed was for them to see him lose his nerve. He didn't want anyone to see him at all.

"Where's Mokuba?" he demanded.

“Mokuba’s in surgery,” Isis said. “You can see him in the morning. There’s nothing you can do right now except get out of your suit and rest.”

“There’s _always_ something I can do,” Seto said, trying again to shake her off, but her grip was firm. She drew in closer, her voice dropping to a volume only he could hear.

“Kaiba. Kaiba, listen to me. I’m not here to drag you off to debriefing," she said. “Both of my brothers are Rangers. _Both_ of them. I know what you’re feeling. I'm just here to make sure you're alright."

“I – ” He exhaled, breathing hard; his migraine was now beating itself flat, a hot, bright pulsing. She was right. There was nothing he could do, not right now. She held off the paramedics with a brief wave of her hand, the other hand still on his arm, undeterred by the sticky threads of kaiju blood. Her insistence was not lost on him. _Is he alright_ : that's all she wanted to know. An ex-Ranger, with two Ranger brothers. A knot loosened in his chest.

“Get this off me,” he said.

She nodded. “Let's go.”

* * *

The paramedics gave him a pill for the migraine, which he swallowed dry, on the spot. Isis relieved a suit technician of the red duffle bag that contained the rapid suit removal kit. In silence, they went to the Shatterdome’s locker rooms, where a handful of people were retrieving the things they’d left behind an hour or so earlier, when the siren had gone off. At the sight of Isis, her hand still locked around Seto’s arm, and Seto looming in his dirty Drivesuit, leveling a dead stare at all of them, they paused, hands hovering over their abandoned shampoo bottles and toothbrushes.

“Get your things and go,” Isis said, and marched Seto to the farthest shower stall. His booted footsteps echoed against the cold tiles, an unnaturally loud sound, chipping painfully at his head. This corner of the locker room was empty and quiet, filled with a dry, yellow-white light. He stood in the center of the stall, arms half-raised, as she coated the kaiju blood with detox powder. Then, with a squeak of the tap, she turned on the shower.

The water was a mercy. The kaiju blood slid off him in long, dusty streams and vanished down the drain, along with the salt and sand crusted on his suit. Every minute of the last hour had lodged like a splinter into his body. Mokuba’s sudden confusion in the Conn Pod. His realization, dawning in Seto’s mind. _What did you do?_ White Dragon racing through Seto, trying to possess him from the inside out. A victory and a failure, all at the same time. He did not understand. He was still alone on the beach, considering the waves, the weight of his suit. What did it matter that Des Gardius was dead, if the price was Mokuba and White Dragon? Or was it the other way around?

The water softened them, removed them all. The water was silence, at last, in his head. When she reached for the tap, he nudged her hand away.

Then Isis tied her hair back and rolled up the sleeves of her blouse. From the red duffel bag, she took a short, ratchet-like tool and stepped into the shower, setting to work on the suit. The shower soaked her blouse as she worked the fastener bolts on his shoulder guards, but she did not seem to mind, deftly turning the ratchet with her slender hands. The bolts popped up one by one, like white mushrooms, out of the white plates. She pried the guards off his shoulders and set them aside on a nearby locker room bench.

“Turn around,” she said. He turned around, bowing his head under the shower, water running in hot, soft trails down his face. He ran his hands backwards through his hair and hung them on the back of his neck, swaying slightly as Isis pulled the Spinal Clamp, pin by pin, out of his spinal ports. Each detachment made a short, muffled snap, leaving a prickle of feeling. Almost nothing, compared to White Dragon striking like lightning through every nerve of his body.

“Do you want to tell me what happened to White Dragon? Why we lost neural handshake?” Isis said, from behind him, working the plates on his back. Seto exhaled forcefully, blowing water from his lips, anxiety closing around his throat.

“What makes you think I know anything about that?” he said, staring at the wall in front of him, tracing the white lines between the grey tiles. She set the back plates down.

“Because you’re not asking about it,” she said. “You’re not demanding answers, which means you have one already. And, seeing as you’re not demanding anyone’s head on a platter… turn around.”

Seto turned around a second time, towering over her, scowling. He hated when people discovered his tells. “Cute theory.”

Despite the warm steam clouding the air, the look she gave him was clear and ice-cool.

“Am I wrong?” she said, undeterred by his bristling. Water pooled around their feet. Her entire front was drenched. With one hand on his chest plate she held him steady, unscrewing bolts with the other, her mouth tight with concentration.

What was she doing here, anyway? He’d watched all the old videos of Tomb Keeper against kaiju, taken notes on her and Rishid’s strategies. The slow, patient baiting; letting kaiju wear themselves out in a nervy dance against Tomb Keeper's tremendous engine. The rapid strike, always when the dumb reptile least seemed to expect it. Isis was too smart to be dismantling Drivesuits in locker rooms, or squeezing research funding from Kaiba Corp.

“Tell me something first,” he said. “Why did you get taken out of Tomb Keeper?”

A sudden, unfamiliar look flashed darkly across her face. She frowned at a bolt, briskly twisting the ratchet.

“Malik tested well. Very well, in fact... you’re one of the only two Rangers who ever tested better,” she said, at length. “He was drift compatible with both me and Rishid. Dartz wanted him to replace one of us, but Pegasus refused. He won’t split a working team.”

Seto frowned. But they had split the team, in the end. Isis glanced up at him, her mouth curving in a small smile, as though he’d spoken the thought aloud.

“Before he became a Ranger, Malik used to be something of a delinquent,” Isis said. “Some skeletons in the closet... Dartz threatened to make a body out of what bones he found, if one of us didn’t make room for him in Tomb Keeper. So I resigned.”

The last bolt rose out of the chest plate. Isis dug her fingers around the edges and gently pried the plate away. Just like that, there was room for his lungs again, for a truly deep, full breath, a bellows for his anger on her behalf. Typical Dartz.

“I’d put this back on in a heartbeat if it meant keeping either of my brothers out of a Jaeger,” she said, holding the chest plate, gaze drifting over it. Tomb Keeper in the crystal blue waters off the coast of Los Angeles, burnished by the golden light of the sun, plunging a bomb down Thousand-Eyes’ throat. “But I suppose that’s not my role in this.”

She tossed the chest plate onto the bench. The rare sour note in her tone did not escape him.

“Better?”

“Yes,” Seto said, holding out his hand for the ratchet. What remained of the Drivesuit covered his arms and lower body, all things he could do himself. He made short work of it, handing each piece to Isis, unstrapping the boots and tossing them aside. Who else might’ve tested better than Malik? Not Mokuba. Obviously not Jounouchi. Valentine, maybe. Or Amelda? He peeled the undersuit down to his waist, tying the sleeves around his hips, barefoot on the tiles. A question for another time.

His dog tags and locket still hung around his neck, now resting on his bare chest. Seto closed one hand around the locket, clutching it tightly, unable to open it. Even though it was just a faded photo, the ripped edge soft with age, Seto could not bring himself to look at Mokuba. The Drivesuit was lying in pieces on the bench, the weight removed, and yet once again everything felt heavy – the water on his skin, the light on the walls. The voices of his brother and his stepfather echoed off the hard tiles, over and over again, doubling in the cavernous air of the empty locker room. _WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? IS THAT ALL YOU CAN DO?_

The floor cracked open and swallowed him, plunging him into a dark, dizzying emptiness. A place where gravity collapsed and never stopped collapsing. Not enough and too much. A zero sum total.

“Seto,” Isis said, calling him out of it. “Everything is going to be alright.”

He shot her a look, letting go of the locket, his head pounding with renewed ferocity.

“I rewrote White Dragon’s neural load limiters. I made her give it all to me,” he said savagely. Isis’ eyes widened. Was he alright? He almost laughed at the audacity, the absurdity. What a stupid question. The war had gone on for ten years. They had no way to win and they were all going to fight until they died, smashing into the kaiju like insects against glass. Since when was anything alright? “And it fucking _worked_.”

Isis stared at him a long moment, with an unnameable expression, mouth slightly pursed, brows furrowed. Not horror, nor pity, but something entirely different. She reached up with one hand, through the soft white noise of the falling water, and cupped the side of his face. And despite himself, he closed his eyes and leaned into it, all the feeling in his body collecting in the seamless curve where her palm met his cheek, like moths to a flame, all gathering for a hot, bright, blinding death – his strength was gone, it was not alright and she knew, she knew _everything_ –

His head snapped up, eyes open, and he caught her wrist, dragging her hand away. Isis sighed, pulling her hand out of his grasp.

“I’ll get some towels,” she said, and left him standing in the water.

* * *

Any of the medical staff who walked by Room 12 in the medical wing of the Shatterdome that morning would’ve seen Ranger Kaiba Two sitting half-slumped in an armchair, legs extended, arms draped over the arm rests, his tired eyes riveted on Ranger Kaiba One, peacefully asleep in the hospital bed. The window curtains were open, allowing the warm, hazy summer morning into the room, and the medical staff were relieved. The Rangers had done their jobs, the kaiju had not made landfall, and the medical wing was free of patients, save Room 12.

If they walked by an hour later, they would’ve seen Seto in the exact same spot, in almost the exact same position, nothing changed but the light as it shifted up the walls and his hand now wrapped loosely around his phone. But even during this motionless vigil, no one would describe him as being at rest. Something in his expression – his sullen anger, the tightness in his jaw – suggested a slowly gathering storm, a dark energy collecting just below the skin. The morning light seemed to bend around him. The nurse who came to check on Mokuba avoided him.

Mokuba began to stir, with a murmur that grew into a long, low groan, the tranquility of his expression cracking like glass. Seto rose from his seat and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over him, his voice low and calm, the storm starting to disperse. Then Mokuba lifted his right arm and froze. What remained of his right arm was a cleanly bandaged stump, several inches above the elbow. He made a short, strangled sound of surprise, stricken – and Seto, with a gentleness that broke like dawn through him, gathered him up in a hug, Mokuba's right arm hidden between them. He whispered something into Mokuba's ear as Mokuba shut his eyes and buried his face in his shirt. No one would’ve seen this. The nurse, passing by, closed the door. They could call the doctor when they were ready.

* * *

Seto sat in the armchair and stabbed a reusable straw through the silver foil of a tall juice box, a well-aimed puncture with a satisfying pop. He ignored the chime from his phone in favor of adjusting the straw, sliding it three-quarters of the way into the box and bending the neck just so. Mokuba, bright-eyed and alert, leaned back against the pillows with a tablet propped up in his lap, swiping through a catalogue of prosthetic limbs.

The Drivesuit’s protective armor had, for the most part, shielded Mokuba's torso from the worst of the impact. Blunt force abdominal trauma, internal bleeding, rib fractures: all of these words Seto had heard before, although now he understood them, and all of them the doctor called "lucky," which he hadn't. Mokuba held out his left hand and winced, gritting his teeth, pressing it to his side like the pain was spilling out. An IV line trailed out of the back of his hand. _Lucky_ was a bullshit word.

“l’ll call the nurse,” Seto said, setting the juice box down on the tray table and rising halfway from his seat. Mokuba shook his head. His own locket, which Seto had retrieved from the nurse, rested on his pale blue hospital gown, under the clear tubing of his nasal cannula.

“No, it’s – fine. If I need the nurse, I’ll call her myself,” he said, holding his hand out for the juice box again. Seto sat back down and gave him the juice box, his phone chiming again. Mokuba took a long, contemplative pull on the straw, studying the tablet.

“What do you think?” he said, setting the juice box aside. “Should I match it to my skin tone, or go for the sci-fi, cyborg look?”

He flipped the tablet towards Seto, as though asking him to compare headphones or shoes. His face was dry, his eyes no longer red, his initial shock long worn off. Despite the painkillers, all of his questions for the doctor had been lucid and practical, and he’d asked her everything Seto himself wanted to ask. Mokuba had always been good at pulling himself together, fast. But Seto knew, below Mokuba’s cavalier attitude, the deeper, stronger reaction was still forming.

The sight of the prosthetic arms, arrayed on the tablet, swung at Seto, hitting him hard in the gut.

“The cyborg look,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s cooler,” Mokuba said, moving the tablet back to his legs. “If I get the skin tone match, I can never tan again – who keeps texting you? You can answer them, you know.”

Seto set his phone to silent. “Some of the other Rangers. They heard about last night already.”

“Really?! Let me see, I don’t have my phone.” Mokuba held out his hand, flapping his fingers. “Give it.”

He smiled, smug, knowing Seto would be unable to deny him anything while he was lying in a hospital bed. Sighing, Seto smacked the phone into Mokuba's palm and sank lower in the armchair.

 _M. ISHTAR:_ _sis told me you lost handshake against a C5, took it down by yourself, and just walked it off… holy shit. Is mokuba okay?_  
 _9:04 AM_

_R. ISHTAR: Congratulations on a job well done. Not many of us can do what you did. My best wishes for your brother._   
_9:10 AM_

_VALENTINE: hey handsome, heard about last night – u have nerves of steel!!! great job. send my best to the kid xoxo_   
_10:12 AM_

“Mai called you handsome. If she ever meets you in person, she’ll be crushed,” Mokuba said, grinning. Seto bore it with a small, indignant huff. Then he raked a hand through his hair, giving it an artful tousle, and instinctively checked his nails. Mokuba glanced up from the phone and chuffed.  
  
 _H. HONDA: hey kaiba, i know we don't talk much but so I just wanted to say you fuckin crushed it!!_  
 _11:25 AM_  
  
 _K.  JOUNOUCHI:_  
 _lol u call that a fight? is amateur hour over yet?_  
 _11:34 AM_  
  
 _jk. u are one hell of a ranger_  
 _11:37 AM_

_how’s baby bro holding up?_   
_11:37 AM_

“You haven’t answered anyone,” Mokuba said, lowering the phone, looking at Seto with that familiar frown of quiet frustration. Seto stared back, teeth clamped together, with no excuse he wanted to offer. Clearly, none of the other Rangers knew the truth about his hand in last night’s events. He could not sit here, next to Mokuba’s hospital bed, speared by the sharp, immaculate line between two points – late at night, rewriting code inside White Dragon, and late at night, alone on the beach – and simply accept congratulations. Their messages were nothing more than shadows on a wall. Empty silhouettes of the real thing.

“I have nothing to say to them,” he said, finally. That much was true. Mokuba exhaled, a short, clipped sound, his eyes rolling sideways; almost visibly testing the balance of a thought, like a precarious bridge he wanted to cross. He rarely did. Seto toyed with his dog tags, running his thumb nail down the silver ball chain. In the two hours or so since Mokuba had woken up, they had not yet touched the subject of what happened. How. Why.

“Well, get over here, let’s take a selfie,” Mokuba said. “At least show them I’m alive and kicking.”

Seto dutifully got up, lowered the side railing on the bed, and settled down next to Mokuba, with a rustle of sheets and papery hospital gown, gingerly avoiding lines and tubing. Mokuba gave him the phone and they tilted their heads together, Mokuba holding his left hand up in a peace sign. Seto held the phone out, his breath catching as the stub of Mokuba’s right arm, with its crisp, white bandages, came into focus.

He took the photo.

“Good?”

“Good enough, since you’d rather die than smile for photos,” Mokuba said, taking the phone back and slowly tapping the screen. Seto stayed on the bed, fussing over a wrinkle in the collar of the hospital gown. “Group chat, so you can do this all at once... ‘thank you all… for your… messages... As you… can see… Mokuba’s doing... great... and I’m… still… a huge... nerd.’”

“ _Hey_ ,” Seto said. Alight with a Cheshire smile, Mokuba frantically tapped his thumb on the keyboard.

“Okay, okay, okay, I’ll change it. ‘It was nothing… kaiju just crawled up my ass and died – ow!’” he said, as Seto flicked him dead center in the forehead.

“Just write something polite and send it,” Seto warned, smiling.

“Fine. Do you have any of my hair ties? Put my hair up, please?”

Seto ferreted his hand into his back pocket and found, as usual, several hair ties. “Blue? Purple?”

“Purple,” Mokuba intoned, now intent on tapping out each word of his message, letter by letter, with his index finger. Without a word, they moved smoothly into the routine, as familiar and comfortable as an old sweatshirt. Mokuba tilted his head forward as Seto gathered his thick, dark hair together, rolling the purple hair tie off his wrist and doubling it around the ponytail with an expert, well-practiced snap. This part – this juice box, styling hair, indulging every small whim part – was easy. It had always been easy. He’d been doing it for years. Now… now there was just going to be more of it...

A knock on the half-open door, two firm taps. They startled, flattening like cats, whipping their heads around in unison.

It was Pegasus. A colorful bouquet of balloons floated by his head, the strings held in his hand.

“Hi, Kaiba-boys,” he sang. “Can I come in? Just a quick visit. Then I have to have a little chat with this one."

He nodded at Seto with a thin smile, an equally sharp gleam in his brown eye. Seto slid off the bed and stood beside it, something cold crawling across the back of his neck. He had no illusions about why Pegasus had come for him.

“Sure,” Mokuba said. “Are those for me?”

“They sure are,” Pegasus said, walking in and tying the balloons to the rail at the end of the bed. They bumped together, with hollow, rubbery thumps. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a train, but then he decapitated the train, so... good, I guess. This is fucking weird, though,” Mokuba said, looking down at his right arm, the bandages, the empty space where his hand used to be.

“Let me tell you, it'll be weird for a while,” Pegasus said, tapping his gold eye. “There's a lot of work ahead of you, but keep an open mind. I like to imagine my eye’s still rolling around on the ocean floor, keeping watch.”

“Yeah. If that’s the case, then my arm’s out there, too. But it's, you know…” Mokuba smirked and lifted his left hand, middle finger raised.

Pegasus laughed, a liquid, cascading sound. “Well, you're in high spirits! Good, good. Ranger Kaiba? Shall we?”

Seto was stone still. Pegasus had only been in the room for maybe a minute, barely any time at all, and yet his stomach was twisting with dread. His nerves seemed to disconnect, his hand hanging limply at his side, an ache spreading through his shoulders. His body refused to move. He did not know how.

A touch to his back, just off-center, hidden from Pegasus. Mokuba's hand, light, warm, a phantom. But it was good enough. He felt the reminder all the same. Seto exhaled and followed Pegasus out the door.

* * *

Déjà vu. A man in red, the wrong side of a desk, an office with a closed door. Seto had been here before, in this moment. He had been on the wrong side of the desk many times. Back straight, chin up, neutral expression, not attacking nor attacked – not yet. Eyes locked on the man in red standing on the right side of the desk. This moment was not supposed to come back. This moment tried to eat him, over and over again. This moment tried to swallow him whole, until the day it finally choked to death on him. 

Now, somehow, it was back. The office was different; a short, wide concrete tunnel, with curved walls and a persistent damp smell, but really, what did that matter? The door behind him was closed and locked. In front of him was a desk. On the other side was a man in red.

“Coffee?” Pegasus said, gesturing towards a spry little machine in a niche in the concrete wall.

Seto did not reply, the fear turning dull inside him, flat, dead. He did not want to be here. Time was supposed to move in one direction only, and he was supposed to have won, and his prize, his fucking victory, was never standing on the wrong side of the desk again. But somehow, time had bent and twisted, like a loop of wire, crossing over itself. He was still afraid. But something stronger was taking over, something hungry and resentful.

“Good choice,” Pegasus said, dropping his hand. “The coffee’s disgusting. Why don’t you sit down?”

Seto stood still, rooted to the floor by his growing anger. Pegasus raised an eyebrow.

“You’re really sticking it to me now, Kaiba-boy,” he said. “What will I do with this... disobedience? This ferocious raging against the machine? God is dead, Seto Kaiba killed him – ”

“If you shut up, I’ll sit down,” Seto said, heat flaring across his face. With a pointed nod, and a foxish smile, Pegasus accepted the terms. Seto dropped into the simple armchair in front of the desk, scowling. Behind Pegasus, the tall windows were full of clear, unclouded sky. A white bird tilted in the sea winds and dove out of sight.

“Now that that’s settled,” Pegasus said, leaning back in his own chair, crossing his legs. “What happened to White Dragon?”

“You tell me,” Seto said. Isis hadn't told him? “You invented the damn thing.”

In response, Pegasus opened the laptop on his desk and turned it around, bringing Seto face-to-face with a black terminal window, laced with lines of code. _His_ code. Isis didn’t need to say a word.

“It’s excellent work. You waltzed right past the limiters. Looks like I should've kept a closer eye on you,” Pegasus said. There was a strange glint in his golden eye – a literally impossible gleam, given the windows behind him. For a second, Seto was unable to look away, frozen in place, a bizarre sensation like all his thoughts were being pulled out through the pores of his skin. The dark hole at the center of the eye widened. His vision tunneled and the world tilted, sweeping him up in a rush of vertigo – he was going to fall in –

Pegasus clapped the laptop shut. The office slammed back into place. Seto blinked, his heart racing. What?

“Well, Kaiba? What do you have to say?” Pegasus said. It was nothing. It was some combination of poor sleep, fatigue, and skipping breakfast. Already the vertigo was fading.

“I’m not going to explain myself to the people who put my brother in a Jaeger,” Seto snapped, but Pegasus lolled his head, rolling his eyes and groaning with exaggerated, cartoonish impatience. Seto stiffened, internally racing towards his next position.

“You are truly tedious,” Pegasus said. “And you’re in no position to argue. The loss of Tyrant Dragon’s team scared you, and you panicked. So you rewrote White Dragon’s neural code, trying to prove something to me.”

“I have nothing to prove – ”

Pegasus blithely continued. “As a result, Mokuba’s neural load dropped so low that White Dragon thought he was dead and severed the connection, mid-combat. Now he’s in the hospital, our most powerful Jaeger is almost totaled, and this entire sector of the Pacific Rim no longer has a Ranger team. Hundreds of millions of people living their lives, looking after their sweet little brothers, unprotected. And it just _kills_ you to know, the shame of failing just eats you up – ”

Rage spiked through Seto. He stood up, shoving the chair backwards, fists clenching at his sides. How did Pegasus know any of this? What kind of uncanny fucking intuition? He hated this with a ferocity that burned – he wanted to smash something, anything – Pegasus, for knowing so easily, and himself, for being so easily known.

“I killed the kaiju, didn’t I – ”

“ _Because you had to_ ,” Pegasus said sharply. “Honestly, your skull is so thick, no wonder White Dragon didn't melt your brain. Your job is not to try your hand at digital neurosurgery. Your job is to _kill kaiju_. That's the game, _Ranger Kaiba_. However, Mokuba is no longer in play.”

Still standing, Seto blanched. “What?”

“Given his injuries, Mokuba will be relieved of Ranger duty, permanently. You got what you wanted. Now, will you please sit down?” Pegasus said, and this time, Seto sat down, slowly, breathing hard, hands curled into loose fists on his thighs.

Mokuba was no longer a Ranger. But this is how it happened? A strange feeling washed through him, a wave of relief and guilt all at once, the room undulating around him – and a sense, a small, rippling horror, that he’d forgotten something very important: the terms of victory. Again. Déjà vu.

He lowered his head, hooding his eyes with one hand, the best retreat he allowed himself; shutting out Pegasus, the office, the Shatterdome, the jade-green sea and the white streaks of sun on its swells. He went in, back to the beach at night – no, past White Dragon, to the code – no, beyond that – three years ago, to the day Admiral Dartz decided he’d make a perfect Ranger, and he’d failed to stop them from taking Mokuba too. His chest hurt, an ache like everything was being tugged inwards, shrinking to a small, black point. Nothing he’d tried was good enough. It was never good enough... he wasn’t…

Pegasus pulled something out of his desk, the drawer clattering shut. With a dull wariness, Seto lifted his head. It was a stainless steel flask wrapped in leather, embroidered _TO M, FROM C_ in a neat, flowing script along the bottom. For a moment, Pegasus was lost in thought, running his thumb over the embroidery, tracing the M, the C. His expression was the quietest Seto had ever seen from him, muted, almost colorless.

Then Pegasus uncapped it and tossed one back, wincing as he swallowed. He set the flask aside, lifted both hands to his face, and pulled out his gold eye, all so swift and abrupt that something squelched unpleasantly in Seto’s gut.

The eye glinted as Pegasus set it on the desk, rolling it under his palm so that the pupil gazed downwards. He ran a hand through his hair so that several long, silver strands fell in place over the empty socket.

“Seto, Mokuba is going to be fine. You have raised a sturdy, resilient young man, and you should take heart from that,” he said.

Seto briefly grasped the thought.

"And me?” he said, toneless.

"I'm sure you remember the terms of our deal," Pegasus said. “The terms you demanded, and received, in exchange for your service as a Ranger.”

Yes. Seto shut his eyes.

In exchange for his service as a Ranger, all the Kaiba Corp military technology Gozaburo sold to the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps and its forty-three member states would be decommissioned, destroyed, or returned to Kaiba Corp, once the kaiju were defeated and the Breach sealed. Dartz had agreed, with suspicious ease for such an ambitious, extravagant demand, and yet…

Pilot a Jaeger, fight, win. And in return, everything. The promise of a world he wanted to fight for.

He opened them. "What about it? I'm still a Ranger."

"Are you?” Pegasus said. “You have no drift partner. You deliberately sabotaged your Jaeger. Your lack of judgment is astounding and merits nothing save a full court martial. Seems to me like you're no Ranger at all.”

As smooth and cold as a knife, slid between the ribs. Seto’s heart stopped.

A vision of the future spilled through his head, like a soft, swollen fruit, mottled with rot: a court martial meant he’d spend the rest of his life fighting the PPDC to stay on his feet, to stay with Mokuba, to keep Kaiba Corp, defending no one and nothing but himself, all while more kaiju crawled ashore and made more orphans, and Gozaburo’s curse on the world burned through what was left of them.

He’d rather die in White Dragon.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, in a low snarl. “You really want to throw me out? Cast me aside like some loser dog?! I never took you for a fool!"

Pegasus leaned back in his seat, the leather creaking beneath him. He leveled a long, scrutinizing look at Seto, who exhaled hard through his nose, bracing himself, prepared to throw his full weight into whatever came next.

“No. We don’t,” Pegasus said, and Seto's stomach swooped like he'd missed a step. “You see, we can’t afford to lose two Ranger teams in two weeks. Admiral Dartz wants you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and back in a Jaeger, as soon as possible. You’re getting a second chance. _One_ chance.”

An opening – not more than a narrow crack in a wall – but Seto took it.

“I drifted alone – ”

“And White Dragon almost ate you alive,” Pegasus said lightly. “I invented it, so don't think I don't know. I have no interest in your fantasies of a solo Jaeger. I won't allow it. Try again."

Seto frowned, smarting, thinking. No Mokuba. No solo Jaeger. That meant...

“ _No,_ ” he said, half protest, half disbelief.

“Oh, yes, Kaiba-boy,” Pegasus said. “You’re getting a new drift partner.” 

* * *

Seto did not go back to Mokuba’s hospital room, not right away. First, he went back to the dorms to collect some of Mokuba’s things into a backpack – his tablet, his headphones, his textbooks. For several minutes, he sat on the bed, flipping slowly through one of Mokuba’s sketchbooks. Then he returned it carefully to its home on Mokuba’s bookshelf.

Still bristling with nervous adrenaline, he found an empty restroom. There, he opened the tap and bent over the sink, both hands flat on the counter, dousing his head in water. Its long, cold fingers ran around his neck, down his jaw; the hot static in his head finally started trickling away. He was not stupid. Kitchen duty? Confiscating his devices? A fucking curfew? Paltry slaps on the wrist. He knew he’d escaped. Gozaburo would've gutted him for this – for secretly rewriting code, for fucking it up, for getting caught. Any of it. All of it. Pegasus and Dartz were not Gozaburo, but they were dangerous in their own ways, maybe worse ways. They could’ve separated him for Mokuba, or taken Kaiba Corp, his chance to do something better for the world, easily. All his efforts, every struggle and victory, rendered meaningless. Turned to dust.

But he was just too damn good at fighting monsters.

Seto lifted his head, washed the last drops of cold water over his face, and closed the tap. His anger cooled to a low, dark smoldering, like coals in a pit. It never really went out.

* * *

Seto resumed his seat on Mokuba’s bed, one foot tucked beneath him and the other on the floor. The backpack sat in the armchair, its main pocket gaping open. In one hand he had five cards: two jacks, a ten, a seven, and a three. With the other hand, he drew a card from the face-down deck on the tray table and tucked it neatly and precisely between the others. A four. Useless. Next to the deck of cards was a chess board. It was a game of their own invention, moving chess pieces based on the cards in their hands, mostly as a way to handicap him. He spent most of these games in zugzwang. He leaned the side of his face against two fingers, studying the board.

“So you’re getting a new drift partner?” Mokuba said. “I thought the whole reason _I’m_ a Ranger is because _you’re_ incompatible with everyone else.”

“Drift margins can change,” Seto said.

“Yeah, sure. But _yours?_ ”

Seto chose not to dignify that with a response. He cast an eye over the cards, the board; the red and black suits and checkerboard squares so familiar to him they existed outside memory. They just _were_ , like the color of his eyes. Unchanging, ever-present. Pegasus had pulled up his most recent neural scans right there in his office. Not much had changed in three years... just enough, apparently. He flicked his ten onto the discard pile and moved his knight to continue harassing Mokuba's white queen.

“So… what happens if you’re not drift compatible with anyone?” Mokuba said. He set his cards down on the blanket, drew one from the deck, added it to the cards on the blanket, and picked them back up, all with his left hand, faster and smoother with every turn. He had not let Seto draw any cards or move any pieces for him. With a swift kick of his thumb, he knocked a three out of his hand and captured Seto’s knight.

Seto drew another card and frowned at the chessboard. Very limited options. Would they court martial him then? Mokuba didn’t need to know about that. _One chance,_ Pegasus said.

“I don’t care about that,” he said tersely. “I’m building the solo Jaeger anyway. As soon as that’s done, I’ll just get rid of whatever geek they saddle me with – ”

“No. Fuck your solo Jaeger,” Mokuba said.

“What?” Seto said, glancing at him.

Mokuba’s cheeks were flushed red with anger. Seto straightened up, frowning, a slender panic jolting through him.

"You heard me," Mokuba said acidly. "Don’t build it."

"And why not – "

“ _Because I know what happened,_ ” Mokuba snarled, throwing his cards down and gesturing at his right arm. “I was in your head. I know what you did. And I know why you did it! I can't even get fucking mad about it!”

He huffed and looked away, grimacing with pain. Seto’s chest caved in with a heavy feeling, one with no name, no known definition. Gratitude? Pity? He did not envy Mokuba: he could not be angry because, in that single, brief instant in the Conn Pod, right before their minds disconnected, he had felt every emotion Seto felt. Drifting made prisms out of people, broke them apart and scattered all the things that made them like light against a wall, bright and clear. And Mokuba was far more forgiving.

Seto fidgeted, fanning his cards open, closing them again. Mokuba said he wasn’t mad. But there he was, a hard line in his jaw, staring at the window like he was trying to shatter it with his gaze alone.

“But you _are_ mad at me,” Seto said.

“No shit,” Mokuba said, turning the full force of that shattering look on him. “Tell me. What was it like drifting alone with White Dragon?”

Seto sucked in a breath, a sudden fear kicking in with a vengeance, rippling uneasily through his body. Like she was trying to kill him. No, not trying. She’d simply begun breaking him apart, the way a child broke a toy they'd grown bored with. He dropped his gaze, searching for enough words to cobble together a decent half-truth.

He was quiet too long.

“That bad,” Mokuba growled. “And that’s what you want. To fight off the monsters and the machines. Doing it all on your own and getting killed, or worse, because it’s better than sharing the load.”

More than his anger, Seto heard, in the low, stony tones of his voice, that same old sadness. The great invisible hand of the past was still shaping them, even now, like clay, in its own bitter image.

The silence was as still as a pond in shadow. Mokuba broke it with a sigh, as deep as his bruised chest would allow.

“Look. I know it feels like… like there’s no good reason to bother with other people, or trust them, or make room for them. I really, _really_ know. But it can't stay this way. I’m so tired of feeling how stuck you are. You’re scared of losing me to that,” he said, nodding his head towards the window, the ocean, “but I’m scared of losing you to this.”

He reached forward with his left hand and touched Seto’s forehead with two fingertips, in firm consecration.

Seto couldn’t help but think that Pegasus was wrong. He had done nothing to raise someone so patient, so determined. Normally, Seto just brushed it off – _I'm not stuck, I know what I'm doing_ – but he didn't want to squander Mokuba's honesty, unburied like a bone from their shared earth. So he kept his mouth shut, filled with a quiet mix of relief and bafflement that he hadn’t lost Mokuba entirely last night on the shore, his unwavering brother with their mother's epitaph written in his stone-blue eyes. Seeing him as he was, no more, no less.

“Please,” Mokuba said. "Don’t build the solo Jaeger. I want you to find a new drift partner. I want you to try.”

He held out his hand, pinky finger extended. “Promise me you’ll try."

Seto latched his finger around Mokuba’s, the cards clenched tightly in his other hand. “I promise.”

“Good,” Mokuba said, and unhooked his finger. He leaned forward and scraped his cards together, almost deliberately slow. Their earlier calm settled back into place. Seto stared at his cards, thinking.

“It’s your turn,” Mokuba said, drawing a line with a small smile. Done with that; now this.

“Right.” Seto discarded a jack and moved his bishop.

“Also,” Mokuba said, tossing a card and moving a rook. “You’re doing my calculus homework. I earned that.”

“Absolutely not. The kaiju didn't take MATLAB off your laptop," Seto said, and Mokuba groaned. He drew a queen. Finally. “Check. Checkmate if you brick.”

Mokuba winced in uneasy anticipation and slowly drew his last card. With a performer’s flair, he flipped it over, and hit the bedcovers with his fist.

“Dammit! I hate your coffeehouse bullshit.”

Seto laughed under his breath. “Again?”

In comfortable silence, they gathered the pieces. Mokuba reset the chess board as Seto shuffled the cards on the tray table. They snapped, brisk and orderly, under his thumbs, and he dealt them with easy flicks of his hand. One, one. Two, two. Three, three.

There was another light knock on the door, announcing a visitor far more welcome than Pegasus: Isis, brightening with a smile as she saw Mokuba.

“When did you wake up?” she said, trotting in. Abruptly Seto found himself leaning back, out of the way, as she cupped Mokuba’s face in both hands, pressing a joyful, sisterly kiss to the top of his head.

“This morning,” Mokuba said, beaming, delighted. For a split second, she paused, still holding his face with an expression both awed and relieved, as though struck by the sheer warm-blooded, beating-heart presence of him. Seto recognized it immediately.

“That kaiju picked a fight with the wrong Kaiba,” she said. Mokuba grinned.

“So I'm the right one?” Seto muttered. Isis gave him a dry look, the gold necklace at her collar glinting as she turned towards him.

“Sure,” she said, and moved on before he had a chance to pick that apart. “I have news for you. You have a flight to Anchorage at 7 tonight, blind tryouts tomorrow. Marshal Pegasus will accompany you. We think your best bet for drift compatibility is over there.”

“In Alaska?” Seto said, making a face; that was Black Dragon's Shatterdome, with Ranger Honda and the lout. The smallest, most backwater territory. “Who?"

“You have to feel that out for yourself,” she said. “Drift compatibility is only half science. The other half is…”

“Art?” Seto said, with a disdainful snort. “Sounds like some wishy-washy nonsense to me.”

“I was going to say ‘faith,’” Isis said, eyebrows quirking, an expression halfway between tolerant and amused. “Don’t be so dismissive. It puts you in control. If you don’t want them, it doesn’t happen.”

Seto scowled at her, readying a retort, but Mokuba caught his eye. With no small effort, he shoved it aside.

“I’d tell you good luck, but you’d tell me you don’t need it. So: excel as usual, Ranger Kaiba,” Isis said, holding out her hand.

“You don’t need to tell me that, either,” he said, shaking it, and she smiled. She clasped Mokuba’s shoulder in gentle farewell and left the room.

Four, four. Five, five. Seto dealt the remainder of the cards and set the deck face down on the tray table, nudging it into a neat stack with light taps of his fingers. Then he picked up his cards, spacing them evenly in his hand with his thumb. Mokuba had taken great care to center each chess piece perfectly in their square. He’d also flipped the board around, so that Seto played white, and the smooth, polished pieces stood at attention, waiting for his first command. Always another game. Play by this rule, that rule; this is how you win, this is how you lose.

He checked his watch. There were still several hours to go until his flight to Alaska. Until then, he had no intention of leaving this room, this moment where the only games played were pointless and idle, and love made every promise easy.

“Mokuba,” he said. “I’m glad you said those things.”

“I’m glad you're listening,” Mokuba said. 

* * *

At last the cabin jet began its final descent through the soft grey cloud cover blanketing Alaska. Seto spent most of the seven-hour flight asleep in the window seat, with the hood of his black KaibaCorp sweatshirt pulled up, avoiding Pegasus’ attempts to make conversation; they were the only two passengers aboard. Now he leaned his head against the cool window, the Alaskan landscape unfurling below him in a rich green tapestry, tracing what remained of the glaciers. The Anchorage Shatterdome came into view, a cluster of stark, industrial buildings and runways on the edge of the frigid North Pacific.

He loved flying, almost as much as being in White Dragon. He loved the speed and the heady power of airplanes and their testament to human defiance: _we will not stay on the ground._ He loved being thousands of feet in the air, in a place where all the serrated edges and rough corners flattened, save for what the earth itself had brought forward over millions of years of idle shuddering.

Every ugly, miserable thing was invisible from up here. They were meaningless, nameless. So was every good thing, but when Seto woke up just past dawn, to the light-filled void of the sky above the clouds, blue and white and infinite, that did not seem like such a loss. Everything would still be there when he came back to Earth.

If he weren’t so goddamn tired, he would’ve flown the plane himself. Such as it was, he satisfied himself with the g-forces that gripped him around the chest as the plane landed, a feeling he never found unpleasant. It taxied to the end of the runway, the engines slowing to a dull whine.

Unlike the Domino Shatterdome, which cuddled up to Domino like two yolks in an eggshell, the Anchorage Shatterdome sat alone, far from Anchorage itself, in a forested half-bowl of mountains. Seto pulled out his phone and pressed it to the window, taking a picture of the mountains, their greens and browns and blacks saturated by the light rain. Then he sent it to Mokuba. (He’d muted the new group chat the second he got his phone back.)

_★MOKUBA★:_   
_looks DOPE. tell the mooses i said hello_   
_9:09 AM_   
  
_★MOKUBA★:_   
_the meese? idk the plural form_   
_9:09 AM_   
  
_SETO:_   
_plural is formed using formula o+n(o). Like this: one moose, two mooose, three moooose, etc._   
_9:10 AM_   
  
_SETO:_   
_If you don’t know how many there are, it’s m∞se_   
_9:10 AM_   
  
_★MOKUBA★:_   
_you are my least favorite brother_   
_9:11 AM_   
  
_SETO:_   
_my position is secure. what are you doing awake? It’s 2 AM_   
_9:11 AM_   
  
_★MOKUBA★:_   
_science says YOU texted ME_   
_9:11 AM_

_SETO:_   
_go back to sleep. talk later_   
_9:11 AM_   
  
_★MOKUBA★:_   
_oookkk_   
_9:11 AM_   
  
_★MOKUBA★:_   
_i believe in you!! don’t forget your promise!!!_   
_9:12 AM_   
  
_SETO:_   
_I won’t._   
_9:12 AM_

A shadow fell over Seto, and he looked up, reflexively turning his screen black. Pegasus was standing over him, warmly dressed in a dark red peacoat.

“Come on, Kaiba-boy. The greeting party’s waiting for us,” Pegasus said, jabbing his thumb towards the windows on the opposite side of the cabin. There were four figures standing on the tarmac, indistinct.

Wordlessly, Seto stood up, shoving his phone into his pocket, putting on his white bomber jacket over his sweatshirt. With his duffel bag slung on his shoulder, he swept out of the cabin, descended the airstairs, and strode across the tarmac, Pegasus trotting to keep apace.

The rain was clearing. Wind whipped across the runways, bracing cold, rich with the smell of forests and the sea. Some several hundred yards away, the main hangar doors of the Shatterdome were open, offering a glimpse of Black Dragon, huge and black and gleaming.

As he approached, Seto recognized the first three people: Marshal Rafael, Honda, and Jounouchi. The fourth he didn’t, a short young man with a handsome, boyish face and wild, colorful hair – blonde, black, violet.

“Marshal Rafael, lovely to see you again,” Pegasus said.

“Likewise, Max. Welcome to Alaska, Ranger Kaiba,” Marshal Rafael said, a huge, blonde man, and he shook Seto’s hand. “You did excellent work against Des Gardius. The Rangers are very excited you’re here.”

“Glad to have you,” Honda said, broad-shouldered and plain, giving him a strong handshake and a very practical nod. No fuss. Good. Next was –

“‘Ey, so cool to finally meet you in person! Call me Joey, everyone else does. You’re like a legend, we study all your fights,” Jounouchi gushed, pumping Seto’s hand with energetic enthusiasm, grabbing Seto’s arm with his other hand. He spoke with a thick Brooklyn accent. Inwardly, Seto recoiled. Already his familiarity, his closeness, was suffocating. “Ya gotta tell us about Des Gardius, I’m still losing my mind – ”

“Okay. Don’t piss yourself,” he said, knocking Jounouchi's hand from his arm. Jounouchi made a face, startled, turning red. Both Honda and Pegasus turned towards them, lightning-fast.

“Jesus Christ, what'sa matter with _you_ – ” Jounouchi started hotly, as Honda reached out to pull him back.

Pegasus smoothly cut in. “Jet lag makes you such a sourpuss. Don’t fret, Joey. He’ll tell you all about it.”

“Yes. It annoyed me, so I ripped its head off. End of story,” Seto said, and shot a look at the one he didn’t know. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

“Oh. I’m Black Dragon’s backup Ranger,” the short man said, smiling. He carried himself well, straight-backed with good shoulders, a bearing somewhat at odds with the shyness of his smile. "Yuugi Mutou. Nice to meet you.”

Seto frowned, eyes falling to the large gold pyramid-shaped puzzle hanging from his neck. It had the same symbol as Pegasus’ eye and Isis’ necklace. Strange. He glanced back up to Yuugi’s face, framed in blonde bangs, with warm, intelligent eyes. For a brief moment, they gleamed, a dark flickering like a shadow passing through them. Almost like Bakura at breakfast, with something moving just below the surface. Almost. It was not quite the same.

“Since when does Black Dragon have a backup Ranger?” Seto said.

“I’ve been here for years,” Yuugi said easily, his bangs fluttering in the wind. “Maybe you just weren’t paying attention.”

“It takes a lot to get my attention,” Seto said, narrowing his eyes. Yuugi’s smile widened, the shyness fading.

“Challenge accepted,” Yuugi said, and held out his hand. His smile shot through Seto like an electric spark, bold and bright.

They shook once, firmly, and let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> isis took seto's drivesuit off in the shower and she said he had an eight pack. she said he was shredded. emotionally. 
> 
> Chapter 4 will be posted at the end of September. According to the University of Michigan Online Symbolism Dictionary, "The forest is a mysterious place ... usually inhabited by mysterious creatures, symbols of all of the dangers with which young people must contend if they are to become adults."
> 
> Your reviews and kudos are always appreciated! ❤


	4. Morituri te Salutant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Here’s a riddle,” Seto said. Yuugi came up to his shoulder. “Four Rangers. Two Jaegers. Who rides with who?”
> 
> “That one’s for you to solve, isn’t it?” Yuugi said, with a slight lean forward. He was very good at meeting Seto’s gaze, his bright eyes shrewd, full of intent. Most people weren’t.
> 
> “Don’t think I’ll go easy on you at tryouts, backup Ranger,” Seto growled. “White Dragon is twice as powerful as that pathetic little action figure you keep in the hangar. I’ve killed more kaiju than anyone else. I need a drift partner who can keep up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU FOR YOUR WONDERFUL REVIEWS!! They have been so nice to read. 
> 
> As promised, here's chapter 4. In my head I refer to this chapter as the antiquities chapter. You'll see why. Please feel free to add whatever songs you like to kaiba's running playlist; he won't listen to it anyway. 
> 
> Enjoy!!

DOMINO SHATTERDOME. The origin of the word ‘monster’ is Latin, derived from the word _monstrum_ , meaning ‘divine omen’ or ‘portent.’ Before that, the verb _monere_ , to warn. Monsters were a sign that something was wrong – misaligned, out of joint – with the world. Not an illness, but the symptom. 

Nowadays, most people’s fears began and ended with the monster. So Ryou liked to keep the origin of the word in mind as he set about his work. The idea that the kaiju were omens of some danger greater than themselves kept him focused.

The seventeen-hour time difference between Domino and San Francisco kept him awake, well into the early hours of the morning. He sat cross-legged on the couch in the lounge, watching the observation helicopter’s footage of White Dragon struggling with Des Gardius on his laptop, an open notebook in his lap. Someone had left a maths book on the coffee table and a problem set on the whiteboard, all of it correctly solved, and under attack from a deftly sketched white dragon.

The feeling – the odd darkness that sat in his body like an extra bone, or some unknown organ, ill-fitting but inextricable – was quiet. Sometimes he woke up in unfamiliar places, with headaches and blood under his fingernails; sometimes it was short, a brief, blackened second. Like at breakfast the other day, when the sight of Pegasus had kicked him out of his own head and he’d come back moments later, with a small, jagged hole torn in his memory. That was some sort of monstrum of its own. The doctors said they couldn’t find anything wrong with him. He stopped asking. 

Ryou rewound the footage to the moment where Des Gardius smashed its claws through White Dragon’s visor. He rewound the footage a second time and watched it again, at half-speed. If the Rangers hadn’t dodged, at just the right moment, Des Gardius might've grabbed them both, instead of just one. The elder Kaiba had very strong instincts. 

Something about Des Gardius here seemed… unusual. Unusual, like Insect Queen had been unusual. But what? 

He was tempted to ignore the growling of his stomach. Eating seemed to give the darkness energy, an energy that was supposed to be _his_. But the clock on his laptop said 6:03. The mess hall had just opened, and he needed to eat, whether or not anything else was hungry. 

So Ryou gathered his things, pausing to flip the maths book open to the inside cover. _Kaiba Mokuba_ , written in a neat hand _._ Ryou took the book with him, making idle plans to visit Mokuba in the medical wing. He seemed like a nice kid. 

Later, Otogi found Ryou in the mess hall, sitting with a bowl of oatmeal and his laptop, the Des Gardius footage open in one window and the footage from Insect Queen in another. Haga and Ryuuzaki had fought Insect Queen in broad daylight, making every blow between flesh and metal crisp and clear.

“I don't get you sometimes. How can you watch this?” Otogi said, leaning over his shoulder, frowning. “Like, didn’t your mom and sister…?”

Ryou looked up at him, fixing him with a glance long enough that he reddened, mouth shut.

“Yes. They died when Necrofear attacked Osaka. But if it helps us learn something, if we can stop them... I’ll do it,” Ryou said, looking back to the screen. Insect Queen smashed through Tyrant Dragon’s head with a splintering crunch of metal. Otogi jerked his head away with a pained grimace.

He took the seat next to Ryou, casting a skeptical eye over the nearly-empty pot of coffee next to the laptop. 

“Bro. Did you drink all of that? How long have you been up?”

“All night,” Ryou murmured. “Jet lag.”

“Yeah, me too,” Otogi said. “Studying the schematics for Kaiba’s precious White Dragon, ‘cause we’re starting repairs. Look at this.”

He leaned over and grabbed the laptop, dragging through the footage to the moment where the beam from White Dragon’s burst cannon shot through Des Gardius’ neck, turning the screen white. 

“Kaiba was lead engineer on _that,_ when he was like, eighteen, _and_ he was running Kaiba Corp _and_ in Ranger training. It's unstable as shit, but it's a fucking marvel of modern engineering. How can someone so smart be such a dick?”

Ryou took a bite of his oatmeal, humming a non-answer in reply. Otogi liked to vent. Kaiba was unpleasant, yes, and somewhat intense, but it all had a faint whiff of deflection. On screen, Insect Queen tore the remains of Tyrant Dragon apart, the camera shaking as the engine core exploded, fiery-red over the dark green waters. It was an unnecessary deflection, really. There was no shame in feeling fear.

“So that’s what I learned,” Otogi said. “Anyway. I hope you're getting something useful out of that."

“Mmm,” Ryou said, through a mouthful of toast. “I have, ah… let’s call it a weird theory.”

“Lay it on me,” Otogi said, pouring them both more coffee.

“Alright. Look at this,” Ryou said, scrolling through the footage again. “Insect Queen keeps attacking Tyrant Dragon’s head. Over here… Des Gardius breaks through and almost grabs Ranger, er, Mokuba. It’s rather precise. They targeted the Conn Pods. We tend to believe they see the Jaegers as other big, dull creatures, but… what if they're _aware_ of the Rangers?”

“But every kaiju that's come through the Breach has died," Otogi said. “How would they know? Maybe these two were just smarter than the others? ‘Cause it’s not like they're running back to the Breach all like, ‘hey guys, there’s Rangers in the Jaegers!’”

“Maybe something on our side is communicating with them,” Ryou said.

“Yeah, totally. Sending messages right into another dimension,” Otogi said, his green eyes flicking up to meet Ryou’s. He smirked. “And I made sweet, sweet love to Mothman behind a diner in Arizona.”

Ryou sighed. He _did_ say it was weird.

“I doubt it,” he said, closing the laptop. "You're not his type."

* * *

 

ANCHORAGE SHATTERDOME. Marshal Rafael and the Rangers had clearly been hoping to host Seto – take him to breakfast and show him around, or hang out before the tryouts, or something. Like this was some sort of vacation, or a visit between old friends. Seto brushed them off, claiming he needed to work. Which was true: repairs had started on White Dragon, and it was the perfect moment to redesign the visor. It was a weak point in the Conn Pod. No kaiju should be able to break through that easily… the entire Conn Pod needed to be redesigned. But how? The question ate up the rest of the day. 

Pegasus swung by his drab little room just after 10 PM. Seto was sitting cross-legged on the bed, hunched over his laptop, fingers laced together.

 _“_ No more jamming with the console cowboys. Hand it over, Kaiba-boy,” Pegasus said. 

With a surge of resentment, Seto silently saved his work. Then he turned off the laptop and shoved it back into the soft case. He’d wanted to dig through Pegasus’ files for Black Dragon’s Ranger profiles. _That_ question had been begging his attention all day long. But every time he gave it thought, Des Gardius’ claws burst through the visor again, splinters of glass hurtling through his thoughts.

He unfolded his legs and stood up, still holding the laptop, thinking. 

“Something on your mind?” Pegasus said. 

“Isis said my best bet is here,” Seto said. “Is it one of Black Dragon's Rangers?”

“Oooh, great question,” Pegasus said blithely, reaching for the laptop, but Seto drew away, bristling.

“Alright, alright, settle down,” Pegasus said, lifting his hand in a placating gesture. “I’ll throw you a bone. Yes, the three of them will be at your tryouts.” 

Seto chewed his tongue, hating the taste of his next question.

"Do they know... _why_ I need a new drift partner?"

"They know that an instability in KSRA-8 caused White Dragon to lose neural handshake during combat operations, resulting in a temporary advantage for Des Gardius," Pegasus said. "And that's all anyone knows about it. If you want your new drift partner to know the exact nature of that instability, you can tell them yourself."

 _I am not an instability_ , Seto wanted to say, face growing hot, but even he knew it was a neat solution: blame it all on the ineffable black-box whims of a powerful artificial intelligence. Now the truth was all his own to tell. Confess. Whatever. The prospect tangled in his thoughts.

Pegasus plucked the laptop from Seto’s hands and tucked it under his arm. “You can have this back tomorrow morning.”

“Great,” Seto said, already forming a plan to text Mokuba, and have _him_ dig up the profiles. But as soon as he crawled into bed, ten minutes later, he fell asleep, phone in hand, every part of him sandbagged by the past three days. 

* * *

In the morning, the Ranger question was still on his mind. Seto laced up his running shoes, tapped through his watch for a playlist, and mapped an eight-mile path that took him out into the wilderness around the Anchorage Shatterdome. The air was cool and clear, refreshing after Domino’s thick, humid summer, and he set off towards the perimeter of the base. 

Three Rangers, for a two-person Jaeger. One of them might be his new drift partner, and the tryouts were hours away. As he ran, crossing the perimeter and following a dirt path into the trees, he outlined what he knew.

ONE. Jounouchi and Honda were the main Ranger team. They were drift compatible with each other.

TWO. At least one of the three Black Dragon Rangers was drift compatible with the other two. That person was the structural center of the team, and could not be his drift partner.

The forest was peaceful, the thick undergrowth bathed in the soft light of a long Alaskan dawn. There were other footprints on the overgrown path, freshly stamped into the damp earth. Still, Seto encountered no one. 

THREE. The two Rangers who were not his new partner had to be drift compatible with each other. Pegasus would not disassemble a functional Ranger team just to form a new one. The total number of Ranger teams in the end had to be two, not one.

FOUR. If Yuugi was compatible with _both_ Honda and Jounouchi, then Seto’s new drift partner could be _either_ Honda or Jounouchi. 

His path climbed a small rise, overlooking a narrow, rocky valley; a glacier’s shallow grave. No need for kaiju. People were ending the world just fine on their own. He knocked the thought from his head and ran on. 

FIVE (A). If Yuugi, as the backup Ranger, was only compatible with one of the main team, then Seto’s new partner was the other. If Honda, then Jounouchi. And vice versa. 

But also, FIVE (B). Yuugi being drift compatible with either Jounouchi or Honda, but not both, did not exclude the possibility that he might also be drift compatible with Seto. 

SIX. None of this was fucking helpful.

With a growl of frustration, Seto turned off his music. The trees towered over the path like the ancient columns of some ruined temple, still and silent, abandoned by an unknown god. The only sounds were his own footfalls, beating a rhythm into the dirt, and his own steady breathing. Sweat rolled down his face, damp hair clinging to his forehead. 

The path curved up and around a dense cluster of trees, hinting at another, higher rise with a view of the ocean, so he lengthened his stride, sprinting up the path, rounding the trees. At the top of the rise, the path widened into a small, high lookout point, dotted with low rocks and boulders. The Alaskan coastline sprawled away on either side, with flat, grey clouds slung so low in the sky they seemed just within reach, like he could raise his hand and pull them down in handfuls. The swells crashed against the shores, revealing foamy, jade-green waters, pulling them back into its silver-grey body once more: _this is my secret, my true color._

Seto slowed and came to a stop. He had not seen another soul since he left the Shatterdome, four miles ago. He took out his earbuds and hauled himself onto a rock, panting for breath, the cool air skating over his heated face. The Shatterdome was to the north, shrouded by the sloping edges of the coastline. The solitude rose wild and restless around him. 

Jounouchi, Yuugi, or Honda: it didn’t matter. There was a chance – slender and improbable, a half-chance, but a chance nonetheless – that someone was going to be in his head. His stomach twisted with anxiety. A stranger, rummaging through his feelings and memories like cast-offs in a thrift store. What's this? The boys’ dorm of a children's home, on the third night. The darkness vibrating with the sound of low, hidden sobs. What about that? Schematics, ten weeks of work, scattered across the floor. His back hitting the wall. Gozaburo’s voice dripping into his ear, hot with cigar smoke, listing all the different ways he’d failed. He was worthless. He was nothing. And that? Fear. A game he lost, over and over.

His new drift partner would see it all. Every struggle, every pyrrhic victory. They would _know_. 

Why not just lie on a table and hand them a scalpel? Why not just let them cut him open? It was all the same.

But Mokuba was right. Seto tugged his sleeve over his hand, dabbing at the sweat on his face. It was exhausting to feel this stuck, this trapped in his own head. He'd find a way to make it work, like he always had. 

A sound from the forest. Footsteps. Someone running up the trail, breathing hard. Seto turned as the runner came around the bend. 

Yuugi came to an easy stop several yards away from the rock, panting, squinting up at Seto. His bright, wild hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he wore a well-loved tank top with TEAM BLACK DRAGON across the front. A small drawstring backpack hung heavily from his shoulders.

For a long moment, they stared at each other. Yuugi gave him a searching glance, as though trying to fit this sudden encounter into what he knew about the forest. Seto frowned, irritated by the intrusion.

Then Yuugi gave him a breathless smile, framed by the sprawling green shadows of the forest behind him. 

“O Great Sphinx,” he said, with mock theatricality. “Give me your riddle, and let me pass.”

Seto snorted.

“Afraid of getting devoured?” he said.

“No, I just like riddles,” Yuugi said cheerfully – and took a wary step back as Seto jumped off the rock, stalking forward, closing the distance. Ranger tryouts be damned. He had his own methods of testing people, their reactions, their backbones.

He drew himself up to his full height, towering over Yuugi, and curled his hands into loose fists, just to punctuate the effect. A simple enough trick, one he’d learned over years of facing down waffling board members and demanding investors. Give them the full force of his attention and make them feel it. He was close enough to see every drop of sweat glistening on Yuugi’s neck, the dark purple rings around his irises. 

“Here’s a riddle,” Seto said. Yuugi came up to his shoulder. “Four Rangers. Two Jaegers. Who rides with who?”

“That one’s for you to solve, isn’t it?” Yuugi said, with a slight lean forward. He was very good at meeting Seto’s gaze, his bright eyes shrewd, full of intent. Most people weren’t.

“Don’t think I’ll go easy on you at tryouts, backup Ranger,” Seto growled. “White Dragon is twice as powerful as that pathetic little action figure you keep in the hangar. I’ve killed more kaiju than anyone else. I need a drift partner who can keep up.”

Something in Yuugi’s face, his posture, his entire demeanor – _shifted_. 

Like that odd flicker in his eyes from yesterday… but this time, it stayed. Seto schooled his expression, betraying no reaction, none of his surprise. He couldn’t quite name what was different – the teasing curve of Yuugi’s mouth, maybe, or the almost imperceptible way he drew back and lowered his chin, not intimidated but intrigued – but Yuugi _was_ different. Something had taken hold of him, from within. 

“You’ll get the fight you give, Kaiba,” this different Yuugi said, with cool nonchalance. His voice was lower and darker than before. “But try not to forget, the real fight is out _there_.” 

He pointed his thumb at the ocean, a languid, liquid motion. “See you later, Great Sphinx.”

Then he sidled past Seto and took off down the trail, vanishing from sight around the trees. Seto waited until the forest was silent once more and then set off, back the way he came, heart thudding in a way that had nothing to do with the exercise. 

* * *

★MOKUBA★:  
_good luck!!  
_2:53 PM

 _DONT knock em dead  
_2:53 PM

SETO:  
_why not. I only need one of them  
_2:54 PM

★MOKUBA★:  
_-_____-  
_2:54 PM

 _call me when you're done!!  
_2:54 PM

Seto silenced his phone and tossed it onto his folded hoodie, lying atop a wooden bench. Then he pulled his locket over his head, coiling it carefully next to the phone. 

Next to the bench was a rack of long, plain wooden staffs. He pulled a staff off the rack and held it out, testing its weight and its balance. Stepping back, Seto swung the staff in a fluid, one-handed figure-eight, whuffing the air around him. Good enough. He turned around to face the room.

The combat room was spartan, almost ceremonial in its lack of furnishings: the rack of staffs, the benches along the wall, and a square black mat, occupying most of the floor. It was the same as the windowless combat room in the Domino Shatterdome, where he and Mokuba had spent countless hours with their martial arts instructors, and probably the same as all the other Shatterdomes. 

But here, today, there was an audience. Seto stood at one end of the room. Jounouchi, Honda, and Yuugi stood at the other end, all three of them barefoot and holding staffs of their own. Pegasus, Rafael, and a young woman with a brown bob cut stood with them. And, clustered along a third wall, spilling out into the wide hallway, were a good twenty people or so, chattering excitedly amongst themselves, gathered to watch. 

Seto saw at least one furtive handshake, glimpses of green moving from hand to hand, conspiratorial glances in his direction. He allowed himself a half-smile. His reputation as a Ranger was worth betting on – or, if you were bold and stupid enough, against.

He banged the end of his staff once against the concrete floor, a sound that cracked like a whip _._ The room fell silent.

“AVE, IMPERATOR!” he barked, locking eyes with Pegasus across the room. He pointed his staff at the other Rangers. “MORITURI TE SALUTANT!”

“Very funny,” Pegasus said. “You’re in fine form today. Let’s get started. Gentlemen?”

Jounouchi and Honda were huddled together, playing a swift game of rock-paper-scissors, as Yuugi looked on, putting his hair in a ponytail, and the young woman rolled her eyes. With a gleeful laugh, Jounouchi knocked on Honda’s two extended fingers with his fist. 

“Okay. I’m first,” Honda said. “Then Joey, then Yuugi. Ranger Kaiba? Any problems with that?”

“I don’t care,” Seto said.

They bowed to each other and walked to the center of the mat.

“Four strikes mark a win,” Pegasus said. 

Seto held his staff with both hands, one end pointed at Honda, the other tucked under his arm. Honda chose a very different stance, with his weight on his back leg, the front end of his staff just above his waist, and the rear end pointed into the floor behind him. Of the three Rangers, he was closest to Seto in weight, and his stance was sturdy. With stony calm, he slowly flexed his fingers around his staff. 

Seto resolved not to move first. Most people didn’t like to wait too long before attacking. Stillness was a trap for them, snaring their anticipation like a wild animal, making it frantic. The _when_ began to gnaw on them. When? _When?_

The crowd was quiet, waiting. Seto shifted his bare foot on the mat, just a fraction. Just enough bait to –

Honda swung first, a rapid upwards strike. Strong, but predictable. Seto swept it aside, their staffs whacking together with a force that vibrated into his hands – he pivoted lightly on his feet, slicing the air with a sideways strike – stopping the staff an inch from Honda’s neck. 

To his credit, Honda didn’t even flinch, save a muscle tightening in his jaw. Seto held the staff to his neck, just a few moments longer, and then withdrew, with a nervous sting of disappointment. This is who they had to offer him?

“One-zero,” Pegasus announced, to a smattering of polite applause. 

Again, Honda and Seto assumed their stances. Again, their staffs met – twice this time, up high, down low – and again Seto landed his strike, a thrust to Honda’s chest. 

“Two-zero.”

“Come on, Honda!” Jounouchi yelled from the side. Honda, eyes fixed on Seto, gritted his teeth. 

Seto let the third last longer than it needed to, just to see what Honda would do – if he took any of the openings Seto gave him – he took none of them. With a frustrated snarl, Seto hooked his staff under Honda’s knee and dropped him handily to the mat. Honda landed flat on his back, the staff hovering inches over his face. 

Honda was not his new drift partner. Seto didn’t really know what he was supposed to _feel_. But this growing, teeth-clenching impatience was the wrong thing. 

“Three-zero,” Pegasus said, as Seto lifted his staff and Honda got to his feet. “Ranger Kaiba, try to remember this is about compatibility, _not_ winning.”

“Then get me someone who doesn’t lose,” Seto said.

Honda made a face. “Dude, chill.”

Seto scowled and stood sideways, front foot pointed forward, holding his staff level with his waist. “Come get your fourth strike.”

No sooner did Honda take a position than Seto launched his attack. Now that he knew Honda was not his new partner, there was no point in fooling around. He ended it in seconds.

“Four-zero. Ranger Kaiba takes the match. An excellent effort, Ranger Honda. You're still in one piece,” Pegasus said, as Honda walked off the mat, gratefully accepting a water bottle from the young woman and a clap on the back from Jounouchi.

At the bench, Seto drank from his own water bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. So now it was Jounouchi or Yuugi. Watching them cluster around Honda, speaking in low voices – Jounouchi making a determined fist, Yuugi’s hand draping absently around that weird gold puzzle – he found he had a preference.

Taking up his staff once more, he pointed it across the room. “Jounouchi! You’re up!”

Jounouchi slung his staff over his shoulder and sauntered onto the mat, meeting Seto in the center. With the lightest of efforts he held his staff upright, close to his ear, and leaned all his weight on his back leg, cat-like and graceful. 

“Hey, Kaiba. I was thinking, maybe we started off on the wrong foot yesterday,” he said pleasantly. “And I get it, you know? Kaiju broke your Jaeger, your brother’s in the hospital. I'd be stressed out, too. Wanna try again?”

Anger flared up inside Seto, racing hotly through his blood. Damn fool. What claim did Jounouchi have? What made him think he knew _anything_ about the way Seto felt? Maybe he’d strike first after all.

“Why waste the time?” he said, and whirled the staff in an overhead strike. Jounouchi countered, their staffs making a cross in the air. For a few moments, they tested each other, staffs clacking together in a loud, uneven rhythm, Jounouchi grunting with exertion. He was better than Honda, more inventive, with swift, well-placed footwork. Something about his style seemed –

Unpredictable. Seto narrowly blocked a well-aimed strike, sweating, and saw a flash of triumphant disbelief in Jounouchi's eyes – he deliberately faltered in his footwork, an unbalanced stumble, just enough to push Jounouchi’s confidence over the line – perfect.

Seto slid his staff between Jounouchi’s arm and chest and heaved, tumbling him to the floor. Jounouchi recovered fast, rolling and rising onto one knee, but Seto was faster. He sliced the staff into Jounouchi’s face, stopping it a hair’s-breadth away from his cheek. Jounouchi’s blonde hair fluttered as air rushed into the wake, his eyes widening with alarm. One-zero.

“If you want my respect, you have to earn it,” Seto said, and withdrew, spreading his feet, holding his staff level at his waist. Before he was even done adjusting his grip, Jounouchi hopped to his feet and swung, a neat flick of his staff. The end smacked into the small of Seto’s back. Someone in the crowd whistled their appreciation.

With another spike of anger, Seto clenched his jaw. Dumb fucking luck. A strategy for morons. 

“Who says I want it?” Jounouchi said, an impish grin stealing across his face. 

“Very good, Ranger! One-one,” Pegasus said. 

“I’m just saying, you seem a little – uptight!” Jounouchi staggered backwards as Seto attacked, driven by a potent fuel of temper and adrenaline – with a whack of his staff, he broke Jounouchi’s grip and then grabbed his arm, pivoting and throwing him hard onto the floor. 

With a low _oof!_ of pain, Jounouchi toppled to the floor, landing hard on his side. Seto stood over him, pointing the staff under his chin, fuming. Jounouchi scowled up at him. This was also the wrong feeling. Definitely wrong.

“Is that all you can do? Run your ignorant mouth?!” he snarled. From the corner of his eye he saw the young woman lean over, whispering into Yuugi’s ear. Yuugi’s gaze was locked on Seto, eyes burning brightly in his clouded frown. 

“Two-one. Some restraint is in order, Ranger Kaiba,” Pegasus said.

Seto shot him a look, full of disgust. Why should he make it easy for them? For anyone? 

“I think we both know by now that we’re not drift compatible,” Jounouchi said, with measured patience, getting back to his feet. “So why don’t we just have some fun? See who’s better?”

“It’s obvious who’s better.”

“So what? Are you scared?” Jounouchi said.

Without a word, Seto took several steps backwards, away from Jounouchi. Fine. If he and Jounouchi weren’t compatible, then the only thing left to do was win. 

And for that, restraint was never in order. 

He bent his front leg, holding the staff up and parallel to his thigh. Tension gathered in his thigh and his shoulders, burning in his muscles. Sweat ran down his neck. Jounouchi settled into another neutral, sideways stance, staff at his waist, his chest rising and falling. Once. Twice.

Seto surged forward, using all of his speed and strength to make Jounouchi block, block, block again, punctuated by sharp clacks that ricocheted around the silent room. All of his fury from the past few days flared outwards through the staff. There was nowhere else it could go, and there would be plenty left for Yuugi. 

Jounouchi was on his back foot, his face shining with effort, just barely keeping up with Seto’s barrage of blows. Seto could taste the desperation in every counter, in the way Jounouchi stumbled backwards, trying to put distance between them. Was this _fun?_ He’d make him regret the word. He'd ram it down his throat.

Seto spun the staff in a figure-eight, so fast it whistled – with two forceful blows, he knocked Jounouchi’s staff out of his hands, sending it clattering to the mat. With a derisive snort, a casual sweep of his foot, Seto kicked it away, sending it bouncing and rolling across the mat. He was not the only angry one in the room: _what a jerk,_ Yuugi’s friend hissed. He didn’t care. 

Jounouchi took a step back, empty hands closing into fists. 

“Did you wander in here by accident? How did they make someone as useless as you a Ranger?” Seto said coolly. His anger was in his chest now, a thick, dark clot, beating through his body. Pegasus couldn’t call the strike because he had not yet struck. “Obviously you’re not a Ranger because of _talent_.”

“Hey now,” Jounouchi said, reddening to his ears. “I work just as hard as anyone else!”

“And this is all you have to show for it,” Seto said. “Empty-handed, backed into a corner, just waiting for the sword to fall. Pathetic.”

“You know what? Nah. I don’t go down that easy,” Jounouchi said, adopting a boxer’s stance, fists up. Seto snorted with contempt and raised his staff once more. Did Jounouchi honestly think he’d get out of this? 

“Max. Call the damn strike,” Marshal Rafael graveled, looking down at Pegasus with his arms crossed. That was the reasonable thing to do – for all his bravado, Jounouchi was open and completely disarmed, of course Seto would win the strike – but Pegasus, his mouth tilted in a strange smile, said nothing. 

Seto swung, moving like water. A high feint that brought Jounouchi’s arms up, flowing into a mid-level sweep, a slice to the ribs that would send Jounouchi crashing to the mat once more – something clipped him right behind the knees, the floor vanishing underfoot, the room tilting wildly – 

_WHAM._

Seto landed hard on his back, flattened, all the air punched out of his lungs. Out of a distant, stunned silence, he heard his staff hit the mat, one end first, followed by the rest: _thump… whap._ What the hell just happened? He blinked and set his elbows against the mat, starting to rise, only to find the end of a staff hovering over his face, so close he could count each dark freckle of the wood grain.

Standing over him, wielding the staff like a spear, with flashing violet eyes, was Yuugi Mutou.

* * *

Was this some kind of fucking joke?

Yuugi held the staff steady, keeping his new drift partner (maybe) pinned to the floor. Despite being disarmed, down on the mat, Kaiba still intimidated him. His entire body radiated fury, from his short, hard breathing, his muscular chest heaving under his sweat-soaked black tank top, to his eyes, locked on Yuugi with a gaze like broken glass. The way Kaiba fought was like someone had trapped a thundercloud and set it loose in the room: a force of nature, bottled up in a human body. 

And only seconds before, all of that had been directed at Joey, unarmed. Of course, Yuugi had to step in. 

Kaiba was a stranger to him, and yet, something about the whole situation was distressingly familiar. Did the PPDC just like pairing him up with the angriest person in the room? To be fair, Joey had long stopped being the angriest person in the room, even before Kaiba showed up in Alaska. But even the spirit of the puzzle – the Other Him, Yami – had also made himself known, at first, as a sort of vengeance. A wrathful hunger, lurking in the dark. 

And now, there was Kaiba... fate was playing a joke on Yuugi, for sure. You want friends? Befriend _him_.

“Well done, Ranger Mutou,” Pegasus said cheerfully, into the silence. “Should we call that a strike?”

“No. Just a shot across the bow,” Yuugi said, looking across the room, and Pegasus shrugged his assent. He looked back at Kaiba, still on the floor, below the staff. Still glaring at him.  

“I can’t let you just land one on my friend like that,” he said, so low that only Kaiba could hear him. “Sorry.” 

With a light touch, Yuugi swung the staff over his shoulder and offered his other hand, knowing there was a very good chance Kaiba wouldn’t… As predicted, Kaiba did not take his hand. He made a low, scathing sound: _tch!_ Then he stood up, snatching his staff from where it had landed on the floor, and swung it sideways, motioning Joey back to the wall where Anzu and Honda stood with the Marshals.

“You. Out. I’m done with you,” he snapped. 

Yuugi frowned, sidling forward and offering the staff to Jounouchi. “No one’s hit four strikes yet.”

But Joey lifted his hands, palms out.

“As much as I’d like to… this ain’t my show,” he said, grinning. “He’s all yours, buddy.”

“Oh, great. Thanks,” Yuugi said. 

Joey trotted off the mat, throwing a good-natured wave to their small audience. In Yuugi’s mad dash across the room to stop Kaiba’s attack, he’d snatched up Joey's staff. He went to the rack of staffs on the wall to find a different one.

On his side of the room, Kaiba had returned to his bench, entirely alone. 

Still clutching his staff, he grabbed his water bottle, tilted his head back, and drank greedily, each swallow rippling down his neck. Something struck Yuugi about the way he moved... not at ease with the world, or aloof to it, but in spite of it. Every gesture not just a movement, but a claiming, a small conquering of time and space: _this is mine now._

Yuugi sifted through everything Pegasus had told him about Kaiba during their call two days ago: suspicious of others, as a rule. No family other than his younger brother and copilot, Mokuba. Quick to learn, with a rage to master – a true prodigy. An instability in his Jaeger Cortex had caused a loss of handshake, and yet, he'd killed the kaiju on his own and survived, mind and body unscathed.

Even if they did turn out to be compatible, this would not be easy. Pegasus had warned him well in advance. Hell, Kaiba himself had warned him. 

 _Aibou, Joey's not THAT annoying,_ Yami said, his voice coming from a space that always seemed sort of up and behind Yuugi’s head, somewhere to the left. _He must've touched a nerve somehow. Right?_

 _Yeah. You heard what Joey said,_ Yuugi said. _Kaiba’s brother is in the hospital. The kaiju almost ripped him right out of their Jaeger. I bet he's all nerves right now._

Yami was quiet for a moment. Their connection was like their own secret Drift: his thoughts and feelings ran through Yuugi like water, parallel to his own. A craving for justice, in Joey’s name. An electric tremor of anticipation. Victory inspired Yami like an antelope inspired a lion, with muscular ferocity, an eagerness for its raw, beating heart. It didn’t bother Yuugi. That was one of the few things Yami owned, rather than borrowed. 

Regardless, he was reckless sometimes. With a gentle nudge, Yuugi reminded him that if they wanted to fight kaiju – if they wanted to stop sitting on the sidelines in the Shatterdome, while Honda and Joey and the other Rangers went out time and again, throwing themselves against an endless wave of monsters – then this was the chance now being offered them. That tower of turbulent energy, now standing with his staff planted on the mat like an ancient Roman standard, waiting.

 _It’s not about who wins,_ Yuugi said. _It’s a conversation. We’re feeling each other out._

 _He said he wants someone who doesn’t lose_ , Yami said.

 _Then we better win_ , Yuugi said, smiling, cupping the Puzzle in one hand, running his thumb along the gold surface. It was always warm to the touch, like it had been sitting in sunlight on a hot summer afternoon, even when it sat on his nightstand all night long. Was that Yami, a soul in a form souls weren’t supposed to take? Or something else? 

“Whenever you’re done daydreaming,” Kaiba said. 

With a short huff, Yuugi tugged a staff he liked better off the rack and went to the mat. Kaiba pointed at the Puzzle.

“Are you going to do this with that ridiculous trinket around your neck? Take that thing off before you hurt yourself.”

 _RIDICULOUS TRINKET?_ Yami said, with a ripple of ire. _Aibou, let's whack him in the mouth. Let's shove the staff up his_ –

“Thank you for your concern, Kaiba,” Yuugi said loudly, retreating to the edge of the mat, wondering if Yami was spending too much time listening to Joey. “Anzu, can you...?”

Anzu was already there. She shot an unimpressed smile at Kaiba and lifted the Puzzle's long cord over Yuugi's head. “I got you. It's safe with me.”

“Thanks,” Yuugi said, a small, brittle ache cracking open inside him as the Puzzle left him, even though Anzu held it safe in her hands and Anzu knew what it meant and they weren't going anywhere except a few yards away. The Puzzle didn't just hang around his neck: it sat inside him, somehow, like a second heart, beating alongside his.

 _Still with me?_ he said, returning to the center.

 _Still with you, Aibou,_ Yami said. The Puzzle was close enough that their connection held.

_Good. Stay close._

On the sidelines, Anzu gave him a thumbs-up, the Puzzle cradled against her chest like a kitten, the cord looped safely around her neck. He smiled, spreading his feet, angling his staff up towards Kaiba. Kaiba planted one foot before him, lifting one end of his staff over his head; the same aggressive stance he’d used against Joey. 

Now the waiting game. The last hushed whispers in the room trickled away, drop by drop, into silence. 

Already Yuugi’s heart was louder in his chest, an insistent, rain-like drumming. Kaiba's third match and he barely seemed winded, his proud, unwavering gaze tightening around Yuugi, so serious it bordered on grim.

His bare foot twitched on the mat, sending a weightless ripple up the leg of his sweatpants. 

A deliberate false start. A trap. Yuugi didn’t move. Kaiba was playing a game. Kaiba’s eyes were the same color as the blue inside icebergs, that immaculate, pure blue that flared through the cracks and crevasses, somehow lit from within. Yuugi did not look away. 

 _Long legs and top-heavy_ , he said. _We'll get in his guard and knock him off balance._

 _He’s going to attack,_ Yami said, floating beside him, transparent.

_How do you know?_

_I can feel it,_ Yami said. _He’s –_

Kaiba moved so fast his staff blurred. No wonder Joey and Honda had so much trouble against him. His overhead strike hurtled towards Yuugi with the overwhelming power of an avalanche, threatening to flatten him. 

But Yuugi's focus tunneled on Kaiba's back hand, sliding forward along his staff, a bright spot in a dark room _–_ another trap. If he blocked the strike up high, Kaiba simply had to piston his back hand, and the butt of his staff would crash into Yuugi’s ribs _–_

 _Don’t block._ Yami took over, smooth and seamless and confident. Yuugi slid backwards, into the strange fold in space that let him linger in the world, unknown to everyone around them.

Untethered from his body, Yuugi watched as Yami side-stepped and neatly hooked the staff under Kaiba’s front hand, swinging up and around _–_ a hooking disarm that threatened to lock Kaiba's elbow and bend him over double. A swift redirection of momentum, a move that would've sent a lesser fighter careening to the floor. 

But Kaiba released his front hand and flew backwards, out of the elbow lock, abandoning his attack _–_ foolish,Yami thought; with a one-handed grip his disadvantage was enormous _–_ and he dove into his own attack, a sweeping hook to Kaiba's knee. Kaiba stepped into it, reconnecting his front hand lightning-fast, staff tilting downwards _–_ and staff struck staff with a sharp clap, the wood shivering from the impact. He levered up, the staffs crossed in an X that arced over their heads, and brought them back down, pinning Yami's staff under his. 

With a kick of alarm, Yami realized he'd run headfirst into a trap. But they pressed together, Yami’s offensive against Kaiba’s counteroffensive, feet braced against the mat. His heart thudded in his neck as they tilted towards each other, faces inches apart. All Kaiba had to do was swing up and he'd slash Yami cleanly in the neck… why was he hesitating?

Their eyes met. 

No, not hesitating. Kaiba had let them into his guard, well within arm’s reach, to study them, with that same knife-sharp gaze, the edge dragging across their face. 

Well. If he wasn't going to attack _–_ Yami swept the butt of his staff towards Kaiba's ankle, just as Kaiba sliced up _–_

Both combatants skipped backwards, only narrowly dodging each other's strikes.

Yuugi threw Yami back into the fold. Breathing hard, he grazed his cheek with his fingertips, almost expecting to find a cut, bleeding. Nothing but a thin misting of sweat. 

“I’d say that's zero-zero. Wouldn't you, Rafael?” Pegasus said. Yuugi barely heard him. Yami was vibrating with a sort of thrilled aliveness, like someone had plucked every string inside him and set them all to thrumming. 

And something about Kaiba, breathing hard several feet away, had changed. Some cloud in the room had dissipated, leaving the air around him bright and clear, defining every line of his body. The anger from before, rumbling like distant thunder in every gesture and glance, was not all the way gone. But that look he'd given them, just now... that was not menace, Yuugi realized. That was a reckless curiosity, the kind that pursued for the sake of pursuing. A constant searching for answers.

Not that different from Yami. 

He felt oddly calm. 

_I feel like I know him. Like I'm supposed to know him._

_Me too._

Again, Yami took control.

“So,” he said, with a smirk. He gave the staff an artful, one-handed twirl and bent into a shallow crouch, the staff extended behind him, his free hand before him. Like a bird spreading its wings, preparing for flight. “Do I have your attention?”

Kaiba smiled, the corner of his mouth pulling back like a bowstring. 

Then he turned sideways, leaning all his weight onto his back leg, drawing the staff across his back hip. A tightly coiled stance, serpentine, but completely unlike the others Yuugi had seen so far: it was defensive. His smile did not change.

“Show me what you’re made of,” he said. Yami sucked in a breath, caught up in a delirious rush of understanding. Kaiba was inviting them to attack, to strike _–_ to try. 

A second passed. 

Kaiba waited for their move. Yami’s excitement rose and rose and rose, chasing a crescendo.

Another.  

Three seconds.

 _WHACK._ A thunderclap as they smashed their staffs together, a perfect block against a perfect strike. Yuugi took over once more to block as Kaiba flipped his staff, lightning-fast, countering with a thrust _–_ he was easy to read, in the same way an ocean wave was easy to read: surging forward, inevitable.

They danced, beat for beat, blow for blow. Kaiba pressed his attack _–_ twisting and pivoting and swinging, so light and fast with his footwork he flew _–_ Yuugi and Yami meeting him at every turn, darting around him like sparrows around a crow. One solid, skin hot and flushed with sweat, heart pounding in their throat, and the other intangible, watching, waiting, until the moment came to switch _–_ it took both of them to fight him. He was reading them too, his instincts like a razor, slicing through the noise of their strategy. All of them hurtling to the edge of endurance. Someone was going to break, soon.

 _Won’t be us._ Drunk with adrenaline, Yami swung at Kaiba’s ankles, a full-bodied chop, forcing him to jump. _All yours._  

By the time his toes touched the mat again, Yuugi was there, feinting high, forcing his staff up _–_ in one smooth, nimble roll, he dropped between Kaiba’s feet, looped his arm and his staff around Kaiba’s knee, and heaved, toppling him and all of his bulk to the floor with a resounding, almost unbearably satisfying _THUD_ . He made one final effort, levering the staff under Kaiba’s thigh and lifting his hips off the mat, locking his body in a bridge _–_ Kaiba bared his teeth in a silent snarl, hand clenching around his staff _–_ and for a hair-raising moment, Yuugi thought he was going to keep fighting.

“Stop, stop. That’s a strike. Stop," Pegasus intoned. “One-zero.”

Kaiba's snarl vanished, torn off like a mask, revealing a stunned expression. 

Victory flared through Yuugi. A single strike for the backup Ranger.

He still had Kaiba’s muscular calf trapped under his arm. He let go, Kaiba’s hips dropping to the mat, _thump._  Neither of them moved, both of them panting, Yuugi's mouth bone-dry and Kaiba's chest rolling with deep, exhausted breaths. 

Yuugi knelt beside Kaiba, who glared at him for the second time that day. Did he feel it too? This… resonance? He had to. Yuugi had a wild urge to touch him, put both hands on his chest and count his heartbeats, see if they were beating in time. _It’s you, it’s you, it’s you,_ _it’s you,_ ringing like bells in his body. There was no way Kaiba didn’t feel the same. 

“Kaiba,” he said, a little breathless. Kaiba swallowed, struggling against some inner force.

“I _–_ I lost,” he murmured, in a low voice, only half to Yuugi.

“ _So what?_ I felt it,” Yuugi said. He stood up, almost light-headed with exhilaration; he grabbed Kaiba’s hand and hauled him swiftly to his feet. “You can’t tell me you didn’t feel…”

With a flash of _–_ not anger, not distaste, but apprehension, hot and dark in his face, Kaiba tore his hand from Yuugi’s grip. He turned to Pegasus, their eyes locking together. Kaiba, breathing hard, running through some internal calculation, and Pegasus, with a coyness playing around the corners of his mouth, the air between them warping under the force of an unspoken feeling.

Yuugi bit his lip, taken with a sudden nervousness. Was it possible for one person to feel it… and the other to refuse it?

“Well?” he blurted out.

Kaiba’s eyes flicked towards him, a glance that ran through Yuugi with all the rigid, shivering intensity of an electric shock. Oh. He’d felt it. Without a doubt. 

“It’s zero-one, Ranger Kaiba. Are you going to let that stand?” Pegasus said. 

“Yes,” Kaiba said, after a beat. “It stands. I have what I came for.”

“Alright. Well done, Ranger Kaiba,” Pegasus said. “Both of you, take a break and report to Marshal Rafael’s office at five.”

Wordlessly, Kaiba gave a brisk bow to Pegasus, then to their audience, and last to Yuugi. Then he walked off the mat, back to his bench. Yuugi opened his mouth, wanting to say something, some words to mark the moment _–_ _thank you for giving me a chance, I hope we can work together…_ But nothing came to him, and he was left standing in the center of the mat, hand held out, in hesitant reaching. Kaiba sat down, looping a locket on a thin chain over his head and tucking it down his tank top. Then he looked at his phone, forgetting the room entirely.

Not a fight, but a conversation. Was that all they had to say?

“Yuugi,” Marshal Rafael said, beckoning him with one hand. Yuugi trotted off the mat, staff still in hand. Joey, Honda, and Anzu all fixed him with questioning looks. Their confusion was plain: it looked like Kaiba had lost the point and simply flounced off. Now that the show was over, their spectators starting to shuffle out of the room, Yuugi felt all their eyes, flying back and forth between him and Kaiba, whispering, wondering.

“Yes, Marshal,” he said, taking the Puzzle back from Anzu.

“Congratulations,” Rafael said, shaking his hand. “You were exceptional. I’ll be sad to see you leave Alaska.”

“Wait,” Joey said. “Does that mean…?”

With a small smile, Yuugi nodded _–_ Joey whooped and caught him swiftly in a headlock, pulling him to his chest and ferociously ruffling his hair. 

“You’re a full Ranger now! Ranger Mutou!” Joey crowed, as Honda and Anzu crowded in to hug him, all of them alight with excitement. Yuugi grinned, swept up in their happiness. “Finally! I can’t believe it. You and _Kaiba,_ of all people _._ You’re going to knock the socks off so many damn kaiju, I’m so proud of you _–_ ”

“I’ll do my best,” Yuugi said, Yami’s satisfaction purring in his chest. 

Across the room, Pegasus was talking to Kaiba, whose stormy expression had returned.

 _Now we have to drift with him_ . _Are you ready for that?_ Yuugi said. Yami mulled it over, settling on smug indifference, like a cat bending into a leisurely stretch, flexing his claws. 

 _He has to drift with us,_ he said.

* * *

Yuugi, showered and dressed in a plain black shirt and fatigue pants, arrived some fifteen minutes early to Rafael’s office. There were voices on the other side of the door, indistinct, so he waited in the small antechamber, lingering by the tall windows, gazing out at the ocean. 

The morning’s clouds had cleared; the sky was full of light. A massive battleship, its deck bristling with long guns, was docked in the Shatterdome harbor. Yuugi looked past it, to the wide expanse beyond. Maybe, if he got lucky, there'd be a whale. His whole life he’d lived within a stone’s throw of the ocean, tossed in the gentle waves of Domino’s beaches, threading shells on a string for his mother. Wandering the docks after class, the sea gleaming like melted gold at sunset as he heaved the day’s small agonies into the waters and watched them sink.

For the first ten years, the ocean had been a friend, the waves folding and looping around him like the silky hands of a curious creature, trying to understand the strange, new forms of the life it had created. Then the kaiju came staggering out of the Breach, the first when he was eleven, a howling hurricane of a brute that blitzed through Sydney. All the kaiju that came after were worse.

 _I raised them up from out of the watery deep, out of stillness,_ Yami murmured. He leaned his shoulder against the window, without reflection, turned to stained glass by the sunlight slanting through him. 

 _What’s that from?_ Yuugi said. 

 _I don’t know,_ Yami said, after a few seconds. _I just... have it with me._

In the glass, the space behind Yuugi’s reflection shifted, a subtle darkness. Yuugi looked over his shoulder, his heart skipping a beat, Yami dropping away into the Puzzle. Without a sound, Kaiba had come into the antechamber, standing behind him with his arms crossed, far enough back that the sunlight hit halfway down his chest and left his face and shoulders in shadow. His eyes raked Yuugi from head to toe and back up again, a glance that scraped him bare. 

Neither of them spoke. Again the urge to say something, anything, nagged at Yuugi. Joey and Honda hadn't liked him much either, at first.

“Kaiba, I know this is all a little… sudden," Yuugi said. His hand rose to the Puzzle, tracing the grooves between the pieces with his thumb, a familiar maze. 

“How insightful,” Kaiba said tersely.

“But I also know what it’s like to have a stranger in your head,” Yuugi said. “Having someone you don’t know, digging through your thoughts… like they’re gonna flip you over like a rock and find all the ugly stuff crawling around. It’s _hard_. I’m happy to give you all the time and space you need.”

Kaiba scowled down at Yuugi. As promised, Yuugi let him, searching the waves once more, imagining whales below the distant whitecaps. He’d made the first move; it was Kaiba’s turn now.

Then Kaiba sighed, visibly releasing tension from his shoulders.

“Then... we should stop being strangers,” he said.

“Smart. Strategic,” Yuugi said cheerfully. “So… how’s Mokuba doing?”

Kaiba’s gaze dropped from Yuugi’s face and flew out to sea, all the way to the horizon.

“He’s doing well,” he said, mostly to the window. “He's resilient.”

“I'm really glad to hear that. We were all super worried when we heard what happened,” Yuugi said. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

No response. The silence staggered on. Kaiba was staring at the battleship.

“Your company made all of that, right? Like, all the deck guns and, um... torpedoes?” Yuugi ventured, and Kaiba glanced back at him.

“Not under my tenure. Tell me, where can I find stuffed animals around here?” he said, miming something small with his hands. “A stuffed moose. He thinks they’re cute.”

Finally: a foothold.

“You’re in luck,” Yuugi said, smiling. “One of our engineers is really into sewing and felting and that kind of thing. She made us all black dragons, look...”

Yuugi fished his phone out of his pocket, pulling up a photo of him, Honda, and Joey, all holding plush black dragons with ruby-red eyes, and tilting it towards Kaiba. Standing next to him in the antechamber, lit only by the sun striking off the water, the situation struck Yuugi as slightly absurd. The try-outs were over, and with them, all of the furious energy such ceremonies demanded. Now that they were done trying to slam each other to the mat, Kaiba seemed like he had no idea what to do, arms folded once again, giving the stuffed dragons a sort of wary scrutiny.

 “I bet she has a moose, I’ll ask,” Yuugi said. He fired off a text and tucked his phone back into his pocket. “Pegasus told me you're from Domino?”

Kaiba nodded once.

“Me too,” Yuugi said. “What high school – ?”

“I was homeschooled,” Kaiba said, his tone a pair of scissors, cleanly and sharply cutting off the subject. “Is your family still there?”

“Yeah,” Yuugi said. “My mom and grandpa live in Aomatani, they own a game shop there.”

“You like games?” Kaiba said, deftly stepping over the omission of his father.

Yuugi grinned. “I _love_ games. Puzzle and strategy games are my favorite.”

“...Are you any good?” Kaiba said, with a spark of insolence, and Yuugi raised his eyebrows. What did he mean, _was he any good?_ Like love and passion were pointless without mastery. Yami, tucked away in a deep corner of his mind, gave him an insistent little nudge. _Aibou, challenge him._

_Way ahead of you._

“Why don’t you pick a game and find out?” Yuugi said.

“Chess,” Kaiba declared loftily.

“That’s a trap. Don’t accept, Yuugi-boy,” Pegasus said, and they turned to see him walking into the antechamber, adjusting the collar of his spotless uniform. “He’s a grandmaster, he’ll eat you alive. What are you doing out here? Rafael’s waiting for us.”

“Pegasus,” Kaiba said. “That’s the Paradius.”

He nodded at the battleship in the harbor. 

Pegasus went pale. 

“Ah. So it is,” he said, in a voice that rose slightly higher than his usual affected tone. A birdlike fluttering.

Without further comment, he ushered them towards the heavy wooden door of Rafael’s office. Yuugi reached it first, pushing it open and stepping aside to let Kaiba and Pegasus walk in before him. Rafael stood by the windows, a tumbler of an amber-colored liquor in his hand, his massive frame lined in afternoon light. He wore a troubled look, intensified by the gruff lines of his face. 

Leaning against his desk was a man in a white uniform, the sight of which brought both Pegasus and Kaiba to a short, sudden stop. Yuugi sidled into place next to Kaiba, the door falling shut behind them with a pointed thud.

“Maximilian, it has been far too long,” the man drawled, hand drifting idly over a small bonsai tree on the desk. He had long, blue-white hair, not quite as glossy as Pegasus’ silver hair. His face was as ageless and distant as a marble statue, save for his mouth, curving in a canny smile. Around his neck he wore a pale green pendant.

Pegasus threw out a rapid salute. 

“Admiral Dartz,” he said. “You grace us with your presence. I wasn't expecting you here in person.”

“The Paradius needed some repairs. I’ll be back at sea soon enough. Your eye, if you please. You know I hate the sight of it,” Dartz said, with flat irritation. Pegasus uttered a soft _oh_ and patted at his pockets, pulling out a black eyepatch that he rapidly placed over his golden eye. Rafael offered him a drink, which he seemed grateful to accept, the ice clinking against the glass as he took a long swallow.

Dartz cast a glance over Kaiba and Yuugi, who went still. One of his eyes was pale yellow. The other was a vivid blue-green, the same color as the shallows off a beach, seen from a great height. Together, they made a gaze that was not detached, but detaching: separating Yuugi from the room around him, sliding between the air and his skin with the precision of a scalpel. 

He had never met Dartz. He’d only heard of him, from Rafael and others. But everyone else in the room was, in their own way, uncomfortable: Pegasus, fixing the strap of his eyepatch and his hair with fidgety tucks of his fingers; Rafael, with a grip on his drink so strong it threatened to crack the glass, and Kaiba, his expression so transparent with cold displeasure he seemed cut from a slab of ice.

“So this is our new Ranger team,” Dartz said. “What Cortex do you have in mind? Surely you won’t train them on a new one. There’s no time for that.”

“No, no, of course not,” Pegasus said hastily. “They’ll use a fusion of MHAD-7 and KSRA-8. It’ll take a week or so to have that operational.”

“In what Jaeger?”

“Repairs on Ranger Kaiba's Mark IV are well underway. We're recommissioning the Mark III in the meantime, just in case."

“Yes, one can never tell when our friends from the Breach choose to visit us,” Dartz said. His accent, posh and somewhat nasal, had a British flavor to it. Yuugi couldn’t recall where he came from, which military he’d been part of before ascending to Admiral of the PPDC. Australia? The United States? 

“Your research on the Breach is proceeding well, I hope?” Pegasus said. That's right, Dartz was... some kind of physicist. Pegasus was a neuroscientist, Kaiba a world-class engineer, both them and Rafael over six feet tall. Standing there, Yuugi suddenly felt very small.

“It keeps its secrets,” Dartz said, without much interest. “Yuugi, I am _very_ pleased to finally see you in a Jaeger. I would’ve liked to see it sooner, but I understand your nameless condition makes it difficult to find a drift compatible partner.”

“Y... yes, sir,” Yuugi said, his stomach lurching. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kaiba throw him a sharp glance, the unspoken question carved plainly into his expression. Pegasus knew something about Yami, of course; as director of the Ranger program, he had to know. The subject had been inescapable. It shouldn’t surprise him that Dartz knew. And yet… “Thank you for the opportunity. I’m ready to – ”

“No matter,” Dartz said. “I expect great things from you. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Tyrant Dragon’s team was only ever a cut above useless.”

“Admiral, please. Haga and Ryuuzaki gave their lives,” Pegasus said, but Dartz ignored him, leveling a contemptuous look at Kaiba.

“Are you done with all your little experiments?"

Kaiba stiffened.

"Yes," he growled, his voice dripping with venom. " _Sir_."

"Good. Do your best not to put another copilot in the hospital. I can only allow so much stupidity before it becomes inconvenient.”

All the blood drained from Kaiba’s face. A tremor ran through his hand, a tight, secretive spasm only Yuugi could see, a current seizing through a live wire. Kaiba clenched his fist, all of him rigid with the effort of holding back some tremendous rage.

“My brother is in the hospital because _you_ put him in a Jaeger,” he snarled, his face white. “Letting you breathe is inconvenient!”

“Keep your petty complaints to yourself,” Dartz said. “We're waging a war against unknowable monsters. Sacrifices will be made. Your feelings about them are of no concern – ”

“A SACRIFICE?! HE'S A _CHILD!_ HE’S SIXTEEN – _”_

“That doesn’t mean _we_ should be monsters,” Yuugi said, in sotto voce, under the roar of Kaiba’s outrage.

Not quiet enough. 

A silence seized the room, everyone turning to look at him: Pegasus, Rafael, Kaiba, and Dartz. Stupid. He braced himself as their gazes plunged into him like spears, one by one. Surprise, surprise, surprise; a cool, disdainful amusement. Sweat prickled across the back of his neck. That was a dumb thing to say out loud. Right to the Admiral’s face? Maybe _he'_ d been spending too much time with Joey. Maybe he was done being a real Ranger already, before he even stepped foot inside his own Conn Pod.

But even with Dartz pinning him to the wall with those unnerving eyes, deciding where to cut first, Yuugi knew he wasn’t going to take it back. He hated cruelty, and this kind more than any other: indifferent, almost bored. Cruelty as idle pastime, plucking the wings off a moth and watching it turn circles in the dirt.

“You call me a monster, Yuugi Mutou?” Dartz said, lifting a lazy hand to stop Rafael as he tried to speak.

Yuugi swallowed, fear clotting in his throat. “Admiral. All I mean to say is...”

What _could_ he say? Dartz had a dangerous aura to him, malice lurking in his fine features. 

"I don’t think Kaiba would be half the Ranger he is if he didn't care so much," he said. "We’re Rangers. We pilot Jaegers in pairs. Our strength isn’t killing kaiju, it’s our connections to each other. They deserve their own respect. Sir.”

“What the devil do you know about it? You are barely a Ranger at all," Dartz said. "I've had enough of this. Pegasus, consider the team approved. Now both of you, give me the respect _I_ am due, and get out, before I throw you to the lions."

“Sir,” Yuugi said, his chest still tight, all feeling locked inside his ribcage. He saluted, as sincere as he could make it, heels snapping together, rail-straight from elbow to fingertips. It took a few seconds for Kaiba to follow suit, still fuming, muscles clenching in his jaw. But he swung his salute like a sword, steely and murderous, his eyes fixed, unblinking, on Dartz. Together, they took several steps backwards, until Kaiba’s hand found the door handle, and stepped out. 

Yuugi didn’t breathe again until they were in the elevator, with the doors closed, well on their way back to the safety of the Shatterdome’s lower levels. He laid a hand flat on his chest as it unclenched, his heart beating lively and strong into his palm. Relief flooded through him, with almost swooning gentleness, his body floating with the thrill of being alive and intact. 

 _That was reckless,_ Yami said, brimming with warm pride.

 _Look who’s talking,_ Yuugi said, cupping one hand under the Puzzle. _I don’t think I’ll do that again._

He chanced a look at Kaiba, standing ramrod straight, arms crossed once again, wearing a pitch-black scowl. Kaiba glanced at him.

“Sorry,” Yuugi said. “I didn’t mean to get us kicked out.”

Kaiba shook his head, a single, tight twitch. 

“Don’t apologize. If he hadn’t told us to leave, I…"

He unfolded one arm and pressed one hand to his face, fingers to his temples, forcing something back in. His mouth a sullen line in the shadow below his hand. A soft sigh, thick with guilt. _Done with your experiments?_ An instability in the Cortex. _Another copilot in the hospital._  

Something didn't add up. A puzzle with a missing piece. What happened?

Yuugi bit his lip, the question swelling in his mouth.

 _Ask him,_ Yami said.

Then Kaiba's hand dropped, revealing, in the unfeeling light of the elevator, not the bristling young man who’d shown up in Alaska yesterday, every word aflame with anger, but someone who was very tired, and had been for a very long time. 

“Okay. I’ll get us kicked out faster next time,” Yuugi said, after a moment. The elevator doors opened.

Kaiba snorted. “Do you _always_ pick this many fights?” 

Yuugi blushed hotly, his tongue tripping over several pointed comments; then he noticed the wry tug on the corner of Kaiba's mouth. He relaxed, smiling.

“Just the ones I can win,” he said, as they walked out into the lively bustle of the Shatterdome.

Kaiba also smiled, for real this time, a small and slender thing. “How do you feel about card games?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some notes: writing/choreographing a physical fight between four different people, with technical demands and where each exchange has to Mean Something, is a fun challenge. if you try it, you will probably end up swinging a broomstick in your living room at 1 AM, just to see how it feels. for reference i used [the fight scene from pacific rim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEflWBObef0&t=5s), some [one-minute](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-Vrj7HoPCg) [bunkai](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFDVEs0Mt0s) videos on youtube, and [some](http://www.dlauk.net/ninpo-taijutsu/Rokushaku%20Bo.htm) [demonstrations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJtca3gIwaw) of bojutsu stances, which made me realize the fight scene from pacific rim uses a lot of these stances, but is mostly just hollywood fight choreography. kaiba uses heito no kamae right before yuugi scores his point. 
> 
> As for why he chose to forfeit, more on that in Chapter 5, which will be posted at the end of October. it's ~15,000 words long. He gets more struggles, but he ALSO gets snuggles.
> 
> Comments and kudos are appreciated! ♥️


	5. Roll for Perception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Whether I like him or not has nothing to do with anything,” he said.
> 
> “Of course it does,” Pegasus said.
> 
> "A Ranger team is two people,” Seto said, holding up two soap-flecked fingers. “Not three. Stay out of it.”
> 
> Pegasus heaved a theatrical sigh. “Oh, fine, you stubborn creature. Keep it to yourself, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i rewrote or tossed out the first few scenes of this chapter about six or seven times each (not an exaggeration) and it fucked my outline and i had no less than two dreams about it, one about washing dishes in a compartment sink and one where *i* was yuugi's new drift partner and pegasus was like "your flight home is at 10:30 AM" and i was like "that's NOT how i wrote it" and stormed off to my room in a snit to pack, so, long story short, i don't post any writing i don't love, and i REALLY love this one.
> 
> thank you to everyone who commented on chapter 4! i'll reply to them very soon.

DOMINO SHATTERDOME. The flowers started to arrive the morning after Seto left, a steady stream of bouquets and small vases, tags bearing handwritten notes dangling between the leaves and ribbons. Mokuba read each one, imagining the florists in the local Domino flower shops with their atlases in hand as they took down the orders. _You're a tough cookie_ – _magpagaling ka_ – _bravo, hijo!_ A note all the way from Antofagasta, Chile, more than ten thousand miles away, on the opposite end of the Pacific. The world was that much smaller.

Doctor Tavares did not allow any of the flowers into his hospital room, saying the risk of infection was too high. So Mokuba collected all the notes in a basket by his bed and tasked Rebecca with dispersing all the flowers through the Shatterdome, to everyone and anyone who wanted them. It made sense: the best wishes of the world were pouring into him, and he poured it all back out into the Shatterdome, where it belonged. A Ranger team was more than two people. It was a joint effort by hundreds, and it felt like every single one of them came to visit him, even though he wasn’t even a Ranger anymore. 

The attention was almost better than the painkillers. If he was honest with himself (and he usually was) he had very few problems living in a place where Seto was not the only one who cared to see him healthy and well-rested, and where Seto himself, for all his grousing, was both. 

And, sometimes, he was almost grateful for the Ranger program. The Drift dragged the creatures out from under the bed by the scruff of their necks and forced them, flinching and blinking, into the light. _Here it is. Name it._

But then the moments came when the pain sent him careening out of his own thoughts, sweating as it burned and spiked up his right shoulder, and his breath skipped and stuck as his chest clenched like a fist. In those moments, his resentment swung out like a net and caught everything and everyone. Dartz and Pegasus and Commander Ishtar, the hot, bleeding rip in the ocean floor, the fucking inexplicable lizards that crawled out of it, the whole concept of the Drift, and his brilliant, reckless, terrified brother, who had made a plan about him, without him. Not for the first time.

Thinking about his sketchbooks and his beloved copics, gathering dust, was just throwing gasoline on the fire. Mokuba was savagely angry. 

And then he wasn't. 

And then he was. 

Over and over again, lying in a hospital bed, pacing a relentless circle around the confines of his mind.  

Right now, he was not. The pain had quieted, the evening was calm, and Seto was due home any moment. His last text that morning mentioned a Drift test. He’d called yesterday, slow and cautious as he delivered the news, as though the words might break if he spoke too fast: _I have a new drift partner._ That had carried Mokuba through the rest of the day, floating weightless on his relief.

All the lights in his room were turned off, save the reading light behind his headboard. It left just enough light for Ryou, curled up in an armchair, to read from his binder. Mokuba lay propped up against the pillows, watching Otogi make careful towers with Ryou's collection of dice on the tray table: six-sided, four-sided, eight-sided, ten-sided, and twenty-sided, in a kaleidoscopic array of colors. 

“Okay,” Rebecca said, scribbling on a notepad. “Here’s what we know: we have a giant, triangular maze with four doors.” 

“That’s right,” Ryou said. 

“And the Diamond is inside the maze,” Rebecca said, scanning her notes. “But it’s _not_ broken into four pieces. And every time we take the red door, we end up _here_ , and every time we take the blue door, we end up in the fucking… argh! What the fuck!”

“...Also correct,” Ryou said. 

The four of them sat in silence for a moment, three of them stewing.

" _Christ_ ,” Otogi said, leaning back in his chair. “I roll to attack the DM.”

“I wish you the best of luck,” Ryou said cheerfully. “Princess Adena? Any thoughts?”

Mokuba ran his hand through his hair, pulling the long, ink-black strands through his fingers, stalling. Four mazes. Three chambers. His eyes fell on the dice, in all their myriad forms, and a thought struck him… Yes? Yes. The geometry checked out.

“I figured it out,” he announced. 

"First Rebecca, now you. I've had it up to here with these Baby Einsteins solving everything," Otogi said, and Rebecca smirked. 

"Get good," she said. 

"Yeah, get good," Mokuba said, and rolled his twenty-sided die on the tray table. "I roll for Otogi to get good. Ooh, critical fail."

"Are you even allowed to have that? You’re practically an infant. It's a choking hazard," Otogi said. 

Mokuba launched the die at Otogi. Still unwieldy with his left hand, he overshot the throw, and the die sailed clear over Otogi’s shoulder as he ducked, laughing. It landed on the floor with a distant clatter, rolling to a stop at the feet of his very tired, sullen brother, standing just inside the doorway, taking in the game and the guests with a single, slow sweep of his gaze. 

“Hey, big bro,” Mokuba said, smiling. Seto must’ve come straight from the flight deck, his duffel bag still slung over his shoulder, hands shoved into the front pocket of his hoodie, his hair somewhat windswept. He’d stopped only to change his boots for hospital slippers.

Wordlessly, he unshouldered his duffel bag and scraped up the die, handing it to Rebecca as he walked in. He came around to the other side of the bed. Mokuba lifted his arm and Seto leaned in, half catching, half falling onto him in a warm, heavy hug. Mokuba could feel the sigh releasing in his chest as he let go. Not just tired – exhausted. 

“Should we call it a night?” Ryou said pleasantly. 

Seto looked down at Mokuba; Mokuba looked up at Seto. The room’s half-light revealed what had been hidden at the door: a restless gleam in his eyes, and long, purple-grey dents beneath them. An exchange not more than half a second long, wordless and uneasy for it, until Seto glanced away, his expression pinching inwards. What other people might read as blanket irritation, but what Mokuba knew as a far more pointed thing. Exhausted _and_ upset, limping home with his leg still in the trap. 

The Drift test? Or something else?

“Yeah, let’s wrap up,” he said to Ryou, just as Seto exhaled and said, “No, finish the session.”

They looked back at each other, hesitating, testing the sudden uncertainty. 

“Well, if Mokuba solves it, that’s the perfect place to end,” Rebecca said.

Mokuba grinned.

“Hand me one of the D4s,” he said. Seto reached over and plucked a white D4 off the tray table, presenting it in his palm with a graceful turn of the hand: a tetrahedron. Mokuba held it up between his thumb and forefinger, eying Ryou’s face through the circle his fingers made.

“It’s this, right?" he said. “The real shape of the maze. Four doors, four vertices, and each door leads to a different face. The whole thing is three-dimensional."

Ryou beamed. 

“I was so off-base. Ryou, go straight to hell, you fiend,” Otogi said, with a sort of exasperated delight, and stood up. “Okay. Night, kids, I’m ou – uh, Ranger Kaiba… did you get all my status reports on the – ?”

“On the repairs, yes. Good work. I want the full report at core team standup tomorrow,” Seto said, in a low rush of words, the tone he used when his mind was already elsewhere. Otogi nodded, waiting for Rebecca to give Mokuba a quick hug before they both slipped out the door. Ryou closed his binder, scooped all his dice off the tray table into a purple velvet bag, and rose to follow them.

He paused at the door, leaning over Seto’s duffel bag, giving it a curious frown.

"That’s an interesting necklace, Bakura," Seto said, who was watching him.

Ryou looked back at him, his hand rising to the large gold pendant with the dangling teeth. 

“Just an old souvenir," he said, pulling on the collar of his over-large knit sweater and dropping it in. "I heard you have a new copilot. Congratulations."

“Is that what it calls for?” Seto said. 

Ryou simply smiled and slipped out the door, closing it behind him.

They hadn’t spent more than a handful of seconds enjoying the quiet before he returned, extending something small, flat, and white to Seto with two fingers: Seto’s ID card. “Found this on the floor by the nurse’s station. You must’ve dropped it on your way in.”

Seto took it from him, mildly confused. Ryou stole out once more, leaving Seto and Mokuba in a cozy, silent warmth, a feeling like a pair of hands cupped around a match. 

“I got you something,” Seto said, standing up, sliding his ID card into his back pocket. He went to his duffel bag, pulling something out and coming back to sit, at last, on the bed, one leg folded atop the covers and one leg off, his customary posture of repose. In his hands he held a stuffed moose, a plush creature with wet-looking eyes, a large muzzle, and a blue bow, tied artfully around its neck.

“Oh my god,” Mokuba said, with a laugh, taking it into his lap. “This is the dopiest-looking moose I've ever seen.”

“You like it?"

“Bro. I love it.”

Seto smiled, pleased. “Bakura organized the game?”

“Yeah. He found my math book and brought it to me and we talked for a bit. Now I’m a chaotic good, human rogue princess, fighting an ancient prophecy that foretells my death,” Mokuba said, running his fingers along the moose’s stiff, felt antlers. “They’re keeping me entertained.”

“Good. You looked happy,” Seto said, and Mokuba, studying his drawn face, his listless hands, curled in his lap, felt time bend between them. Seven, eight, nine years turning to smoke and folding into the air, vanishing without a sound, like they were not twenty and sixteen but eleven and seven years old, and Seto was slipping into his room to say good night. Stealing five minutes. Ten minutes. As long as he dared. _Pretend you're having a bad dream_ , he'd say, as if any of it needed faking. 

“What’s wrong?” Mokuba said. 

“Nothing,” Seto said. “I’m tired. I didn't sleep on the plane.”

“Bullshit,” Mokuba declared. “I haven’t heard from you all day. Something’s eating you.”

Seto said nothing, his gaze drifting around the room, tracing each medical device and empty armchair and the basket of notes. Mokuba scowled. 

"If you're upset, and you want me to know about it, you have to say it _out loud_ ,” he said. “We’re not drift partners anymore.”

Seto looked down, rubbing his thumb along a long, raw scratch in his palm, quietly testing the thought. And if he didn’t want Mokuba to know about it at all? A different problem. Then he took a slow breath and sighed, his shoulders slouching in surrender.

“Wait, help me move over, and scoot in. Then you can tell me,” Mokuba said. Seto helped him move sideways, Mokuba bracing himself against the tight flaring of pain as his body responded to the movement. Once he was comfortable again, the bed covers tucked into place and the moose in his lap, Seto shifted more fully onto the bed, wedging himself between Mokuba and the other guardrail. 

Maybe they were both too big now to sit like this, side by side on the hospital bed, both well-built and tall. But Seto was warm, his presence reassuring, and time folded again, past twenty and sixteen and eleven and seven, bringing them all the way back to eight and four, cocooned in blankets as their father hovered over them. A half-remembered voice issuing from a half-remembered face, reading them to sleep.

Mokuba waited as Seto stared, as usual, into space. 

“Niisama. What happened?” he said.

“I’m keeping my promise,” Seto insisted.

“You always do,” Mokuba said, but Seto made a scathing sound through his teeth, a prelude to some stronger sentiment, gathering energy now. 

“But Yuugi is – I think he’s fucking with me,” he said, with a snarl of frustration, and Mokuba frowned. 

“What? How?”

* * *

EARLIER THAT DAY, BACK AT THE ANCHORAGE SHATTERDOME. Seto stood at the industrial kitchen sink, washing dishes with mechanical precision. Take a plate and scrape the remains of breakfast, a glop of scrambled eggs, toast crumbs, and grease, into the garbage can. Swallow displeasure at the waste: shortage rationing was still in effect. Plunge the plate into the hot, soapy water of the first sink and scrub. Rinse it with cool water in the second. Sanitize in the third. Take a bowl, and pour out the wet sludge of milk and cereal. Swallow the urge to gag. By the time the bowl is rinsed, the plate is ready for the steamer. And repeat. 

The kitchen was full of a clamorous energy, the staff shouting at each other over the sizzling, clanging din of cooking for a whole Shatterdome. The smell of steam and soap and food thickened the air. His hands were wet up to the elbows with dishwater, the skin threatening to chap. Scrub, rinse, sanitize. And again, chipping away one by one at the mountain of dishes. 

The monotony didn’t bother him. He had his earbuds in, listening to a bioengineering podcast about the latest advancements in prosthetic arms, and did nothing but absorb. The science was not that different from a Jaeger. It was the same concept, writ much, much smaller.

And it kept his mind off the Drift test, scheduled for later that day.

So it was to his irritation when he went to retrieve another tub of dishes from the service counter and saw Pegasus, smiling like the cat that got the cream, winding towards him through the kitchen.

Seto propped the tub on his hip, wiped a hand on his apron, and pulled out his earbuds, greeting Pegasus with a wordless frown. His golden eye was covered by an eyepatch, the strap vanishing under his silver hair. So Dartz was still around. 

“Good morning, Cinderella,” Pegasus said. 

Seto rolled his eyes. “That makes _you_ my evil stepmother.” 

"Pish posh,” Pegasus said. “More like your fairy godmother. I have a gift.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, holding it up by the corner: a brand-new deck of cards. Seto gave it a wary look of consideration, fingers itching with the urge to take it, tap the cards out, and jump-start their life with a good shuffle, cards and possibilities snapping like firecrackers between his hands. 

“Wow. A two-dollar gas station bicycle pack. You shouldn’t have,” he said. “What's the catch?”

He sidled past Pegasus and set the tub of dishes on the counter by the sink, starting the cycle over again, shaking the crumbled remains of a muffin into the garbage and plunging the plate into the frothy water. 

“You wound me. There’s no catch,” Pegasus said, leaning against the counter. “It's _just_ a deck of cards. So you can get acquainted with your new drift partner. You might find you have some things in co – ”

“I bought a wooden puzzle from his family’s game shop once, when I was eight,” Seto said, rinsing soap off the dish, smiling, treating himself to Pegasus’ blank-faced surprise. He was so rarely one step ahead of Pegasus. “Don’t tell me you thought we're a good fit because we both like games?”

“I just put you in a room with him. You did the rest all on your own,” Pegasus said, and something in his tone gave Seto an odd feeling. No teasing, no mocking. Not even a _Kaiba-boy._ “So you’ve talked already. What do you think? Do you like him?”

Seto dropped that dish into the sanitizer sink with a dull thunk and grabbed another from the tub, scrubbing with a vengeance. The memory of Yuugi’s violet eyes flashing over him rose to the surface of his mind, a surge of unnameable feeling in its wake. He thwacked the scrubbing brush on the edge of the sink, with an anger he couldn’t quite place, pushing it all back down.

“Whether I like him or not has nothing to do with anything,” he said. 

“Of course it does,” Pegasus said. 

"A Ranger team is two people,” Seto said, holding up two soap-flecked fingers. “Not three. Stay out of it.”

Pegasus heaved a theatrical sigh. “Oh, fine, you stubborn creature. Keep it to yourself, then.”

Satisfied, Seto dried his hands on his apron and held out his hand with a flourish, palm up. Pegasus smacked the deck into his hand and he tucked it swiftly into his pocket. After they got kicked out of Rafael’s office yesterday, he’d begged off Yuugi’s offer to play card games, instead using the rest of the evening to keep working on the Conn Pod redesign. But he was, oddly enough, looking forward to it.

“Are you ready for the Drift test?” Pegasus said. “It’s slow-entry. Nice and relaxed and controlled.”

“I’ve done Drift tests before,” Seto said.

“Yes, but with Mokuba,” Pegasus added, with a half-smile. Seto didn’t reply, forcing the topic to pass. “Anyway. I'd like to get a head start on the Cortex fusion while we're flying home. That's all this test is for. Any questions?”

Seto paused, holding a plate in his hands. Cold water ran down the face, with smooth, restless streaks of light. 

“The 'nameless condition,'" he said. "Dartz said Yuugi had a 'nameless condition.'"

“Well… it’s nameless,” Pegasus said, shrugging, spreading his hands. “I wouldn’t worry. Katsuya Jounouchi handles it just fine. Just keep your wits about you.”

What on earth? Seto made a face, briefly bewildered; that answer squared with none of his half-formed hypotheses about medical issues. His confusion cleared with a sharp spike of ire.

“If I wanted some cryptic bullshit non-answer, I’d check my horoscope,” he snapped. 

“Why are you asking _me?_ Ask your drift partner,” Pegasus said. “He can explain himself well enough. Just like you can." 

With a low, frustrated grunt, Seto returned to scrubbing, sharp and vigorous, his shoulders curling forward. Pegasus never gave an answer he didn’t want to give, and Seto had found his ways of living around it, but he hated admitting a gap in his knowledge. A doubt. A disadvantage. 

“Drift test at four, flight to Domino at ten,” Pegasus said. “You’ll be home before the clock strikes midnight.”

He walked away, finally leaving Seto in peace once again, alone with the dishes and his thoughts. Practically, he knew Dartz and Pegasus would not have made Yuugi a Ranger, let alone pair him with Jounouchi, if his fucking “nameless condition” was a real problem. Dartz had revealed nothing except that it existed, and it made drift compatibility difficult. Not so different from a narrow (the narrowest) drift margin. And yet, Seto hated gambling on strangers, especially when he had no better bets to make...

The sanitation sink was full of dishes. He tugged the handle on the steamer, a giant, stainless steel machine. It unfolded open with fluid precision, revealing lines of half-full racks, like a mouth he was filling with fresh white teeth. He filled the steamer and went back to the tub of dishes, the cycle starting again. He shook the crumbled remains of a muffin into the garbage and sank the plate into the frothy water, slipping away, caught in a heaving swell of memory –

– slamming to the mat, on his back, under Yuugi’s fierce gaze. An undeniable victory. Yuugi had made an opportunity and torn through it. Not a flippant strike like Jounouchi's, but a truly skillful maneuver, unflinching in its execution. Disarmed and defeated, Seto’s heart suddenly in freefall through the void: _you lost. you failed. now he sees you for what you are, and now he’ll decide no, it can’t be you, better no drift partner at all than a drift partner who loses, with no drift partner you have no chances and now you have nothing, nothing at all..._

Zero-one. A perfect TRUE/FALSE binary, as black and white as there ever was. Every part of him, every burning nerve in his body, had demanded he push back – pick up his staff. Fight. _Win_. Tear the victory out of Yuugi’s hands and breathe again. How unfair, how frustrating, how stupid that a single strike in a staff fight could upend him like this, and yet the fear swallowed him whole.

_I lost._

_So what? I felt it._

Yuugi pulled him to his feet, beaming, his smile so breathless and eager with conviction it was like watching the birth of a new religion. This is not what a loser deserves. 

And despite the plunging in his chest, even though he’d braced for impact, an old, tired feeling – Seto had felt it too, a star he’d caught in his fist, a scrap of light held firm in the darkness. Score be damned! He and Yuugi were drift compatible. Pegasus was right all along, that bastard: it was never about winning in the first place.

Seto braced his hands on the edge of the sink and pushed, feeling the stretch deep in his back, his shoulders, the dull ache in his neck under the apron string, threatening to rise and sag between his temples. Then he picked up another dish. Scrub, rinse, sanitize, repeat. Breakfast was not over for another hour at least, but he did nothing by half-measures, not punishments or promises. 

He felt it, he gambled on it, he dove into it. What was a petty little doubt, compared to that?

* * *

 Yuugi sat at one of the long tables in the mess hall, tea in hand, thoroughly enjoying his last morning in Anchorage. He had an excellent blueberry muffin, he was going to see his family within days, and people kept dropping by to congratulate him. And where three years ago he’d arrived in Anchorage alone, with no friends and a nameless presence in a Puzzle, now he was returning home with Yami, Anzu, and the prospect of his own Jaeger team. And when the kaiju siren went off… it was his turn to suit up. 

Anzu sat across from him, with a stack of stationary, stickers, and an array of colorful pens. She eyed the blank card before her, tapping her purple pen on the table.

"Running out of things to say?" Yuugi said, taking a sip of his tea.

"No," Anzu said testily. "This one's for Brooke in suit tech. I just realized she might be my most boring friend."

"But still your friend," Yuugi supplied, and Anzu nodded ruefully.

"Alright, let's give this a shot," she said, starting to write.

“ _There_ you are,” said a voice. They looked up to see Joey and Honda making their way towards them, carrying their breakfasts. Anzu scooted aside to make room for Honda. On Yuugi’s side of the table, Joey cast a glance over the proceedings, holding a bowl in one hand and shoveling a spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

“Aw, I love arts an' crafts," he said, and swung his leg over the bench, straddling it. He grabbed Anzu's completed stack of letters and started flipping through them, reading the names on the envelopes aloud. 

"Santiago, Jae Eun, Maria Paz, Devin, who gets _two_ cute stickers on his envelope, handsome devil, Surya, Mustafa… What are these for? Like, thank you notes?"

"Yeah, just like, 'good memories, it's been real, let's keep in touch and stay friends,'" Anzu said. "But I'm writing something different for everyone, so it's taking forever."

"God. You’re such a nerd," Joey said fondly. "Did you write one for me? Or Honda?"

"No. Why?" she said, and for a moment Joey looked genuinely crestfallen. Anzu grinned, devilish, and reached for the stack, plucking out an envelope. "Of course I did, you bozo. But you can't read it until I actually leave."

"Scout’s honor," Joey said, beaming, tucking it safely into the front pocket of his sweatshirt. "What'sa matter with you, Yuug? You're not writing any?"

"Oh, I helped, I put the stickers on the envelopes," Yuugi said, through a mouthful of blueberry muffin.

"You seem so chill right now," Joey said. "You're going home! You have a Jaeger! Your very own Kaiba brother! Aren't you excited? Nervous? You're not freakin’ out? _I'm_ freaking out. I’m not even _going_ anywhere!"

"Yeah, but you're always freaking out," Honda muttered, hidden behind the rim of his coffee mug. Joey pulled a grotesque face at him.

Yuugi rested his cheek in his palm and smiled at Joey. “All of the above.”

Joey studied him for a moment, accepting his answer with a thoughtful nod.

"Okay. I'm gonna write one for Kaiba," he said, snaking his hand out for a card and a pen before Anzu could stop him. "‘Kaiba, I'll never forgive you for snatching up my best friends, an' I’m gonna key the fuck outta your car. Love, Joey.' If I had lipstick on, I’d kiss the envelope." 

“Key the fuck out of his Jaeger,” Honda corrected, and Joey laughed, his gleeful staccato cackle.

“Leave _my_ Jaeger alone,” Yuugi said, although he smiled too, seeing the mischievous gleam in Joey’s amber eyes. 

“Okay, okay, we won’t key your Jaeger. I guess it’s a good thing he’s dragging you off to his lair, ‘cause otherwise we woulda had to murder this guy to get you promoted,” Joey said, waving the pen at Honda.

“Is that really a huge loss, though?” Anzu mused, gaze drifting idly towards the window, and she cracked another grin as Honda made an indignant sound of protest.

“Yeah, I might murder him anyway for that god-awful thing I saw in Drift the other day,” Joey said. “Can’t unsee. Honestly, Honda? I didn’t figure you for the type of person who’d be into – "

“Whatever you’re about to say is a _lie_. You know what? I’m a good person, I don't deserve this,” Honda said, wounded, as Yuugi choked with laughter into his tea. “My reports are on time, I practice my drops, I volunteer for kitchen duty – ”

“Oh, yeah! Oh my god. Guys, listen to this,” Joey said, blithely interrupting Honda’s recitation of his virtues. He leaned over the table, beckoning them all into a conspiratorial huddle over their breakfasts. “So, we're in the breakfast line, hitting all our macros, right? And we see Tall, Dark, and Stormy _himself_ in the back, doin’ the dishes. Wearing an apron and everything!”

He punctuated this with a smack of his hand on the table, loose and loud, and a triumphant look. Yuugi ran his thumb over the chipped rim of his mug with studied disinterest. In the back of his mind, Yami began stirring out from under a soft blackness, his curiosity rousing as he sifted through the past hour of the morning.

“Well, yeah. That's what you wear when you work in a kitchen,” he said mildly, and Joey groaned.

“Yuug, you’re killing me,” he said. “He's such a tight-ass. I’m dyin’ to know why he got fried.”

“Oh, please. What’s to say he didn’t just volunteer?” Anzu said, but Joey waved that down with both hands.

“No, no, no. _Listen_ ,” he insisted, slamming an elbow on the table and pointing his finger at them, with a growing smirk as he mustered his argument. “I can be a troublemaker, right? I’ve caused some mischief, here and there. But _that_ guy... you fight him, and you can feel it. He’s fuckin’ master class. Yuugi, tell me you didn’t look into those sparkly baby blues and feel the same thing.”

Yuugi leveled a smile at him, taking a sip of tea. He _had_ felt things – willpower, and endurance, and a deep, grinding anger – but he had no desire to place them on the table and dissect his new drift partner. Already a small loyalty had taken root, based on nothing but his sense of duty and what he had seen yesterday in Rafael's office: the look on Kaiba's face, a grief both wild and caged, when Dartz told him his brother didn't matter.

"Okay, let's say I did. And?" he said casually, setting his mug down. "I barely know him. Should I _not_ give my new drift partner the benefit of the doubt?"

He tapped his fingers idly against the side of his mug, letting the three of them mull that over for a few seconds. Joey flushed with embarrassment.

"Ah, jeez. I'm sorry. I don't mean it like that," he said. "I'm just... venting. I'm a little cranky, to be honest. I wanted him to like me and he doesn't."

"That's his problem, not yours,” Yuugi said. “Also, he and Admiral Dartz don't get along. Like, at all. He yelled at him about Mokuba during our meeting yesterday. Honestly, after that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dartz just…”

He braced the pad of his thumb on the table and twisted, a short, sharp jerk. 

“Yeesh," Joey said. "Okay, yeah. I’d also pick a fight with Dartz if he put Shizuka in a Jaeger and then the Jaeger fucking fritzed. I’d pick, like, twenty fights.”

“I'd rather fight a kaiju with a fork,” Honda said, stabbing his bacon with said fork. “Admiral Dartz gives me the creeps.” 

“Same. Okay, so like, who would you rather fight, a Dartz-sized kaiju, or a kaiju-sized Dartz – ”

 _Nice dodge,_ Yami said, and Yuugi tuned them out, turning inwards to the dim, formless space he shared with Yami. A dimension without dimension, hidden from their friends and the bustling mess hall around them. _You’re not going to tell them what Dartz said? How he accused Kaiba?_

 _No. He’s our drift partner,_ Yuugi said. _Even if he wasn't, I wouldn't drag that out into the open._

 _I know he’s our drift partner. But I want to know who our drift partner_ is, Yami said, with a flicker of protective warmth. _Something's missing._

 _I know. But he's_ also _missing something._

A nudge to his shoulder, a light knock of Joey’s fist, brought Yuugi back to the physical world. 

“Hey,” Joey said. “When are you going to, you know, introduce Kaiba to our friend?”

He tapped the Puzzle with two fingers, eyebrows raised beneath his sandy blonde bangs.

“Ha. We were just talking about that. We have a Drift test with him later today,” Yuugi said, hand curling around the Puzzle. “Marshal Pegasus wants data for the Cortex fusion.”

Joey laughed. “You’re just gonna throw Kaiba right into the deep end?”

“I don’t think he’d believe me if I just... _told_ him,” Yuugi said, smiling. “It’s easier to believe if you see it for yourself. It worked with you.”

“Yeah, it did,” Joey admitted. Then he paused, a shadow falling across his face. “Yuug, listen. I have a favor to ask.”

“What’s up?” Yuugi said, twisting in his seat. Joey leaned forward and took both of his hands, pressing the seriousness of his request through the warm strength of his grip.

“When you drift, all the stuff about my dad stays with you, right?" he said. "Like, I don't have to worry about Kaiba seeing any of that?"

“Don’t worry,” Yuugi said. “I don’t even think your door will be there.”

Joey smiled. “Thanks, pal.”

He let go of Yuugi’s hands and looped his arms around Yuugi’s neck, pulling him in for a generous hug. Yuugi happily leaned into it, grinning, his cheek squished beneath Joey’s arm. 

“I am so proud of you,” Joey gushed. “And I’m gonna miss you _so much_. Guys, Yuugi’s finally gonna punch a lizard!”

“He won’t get to punch anything if you keep choking him like that,” Anzu said.

“Worry not, sweet Anzu. Yuugi’s indestructible. Also, his shampoo smells amazing, seriously,” Joey said, grinning at her. “I changed my mind. Kaiba can’t have him. Find someone else, jerkface.”

“Yeah, I'll miss you too,” Yuugi said, with a surge of affection for him, and the unpretentious way he held his heart out to the world. Without ego, taking each feeling simply for what it was. He wrapped an arm around Joey and patted him twice on the back, tapping out of the hug, allowing Joey to ruffle his hair as they pulled apart. 

He rested his elbow on the table, chin in hand once more, soaking in his friends’ chatter, Honda's laughter as Joey and Anzu volleyed jokes back and forth. Allowing himself a shallow wave of sadness. Making friends had never come easy for him... But really. Yuugi was fine with leaving. 

* * *

 Yuugi sat on a tall stool in the brightly-lit test chamber, calm and quiet, lifting his arms for the suit technician. She was fiddling with the sensors embedded in the modified Drivesuit. He and Kaiba were only bridging with each other today, not a Jaeger, so the system was significantly less complicated. His left arm was heavy with the weight of the Puzzle, dangling from his hand, but he bore it with patience, swaying slightly as she jerked on the Drivesuit, tugging something into place. 

Kaiba sat several feet away, eyes fixed on the darkened glass window ahead of them. He lifted his arms for his technician with a wing-like movement and a sort of regal boredom, like a feudal warlord getting dressed for battle. 

Then his gaze flicked to Yuugi. Out of habit, Yuugi smiled, despite the icy cast of his eyes. Or maybe because of it. 

“Ranger Mutou. Your hair, if you don’t mind?” the suit technician said, holding the black helmet full of pale green data relay gel.

“Oh, right,” Yuugi said, hastily putting the Puzzle back on and pulling his hair back into a low ponytail with a hairband from his wrist. He bowed his head and the suit technician slid the helmet on, hiding the room behind a layer of data relay gel. With a faint click, all the gel spilled out, dispersing into the suit’s circuitry.

“You’re ready to go,” she said. “Marshal Pegasus will run you through the testing procedure in just a few minutes.”

“Thank you,” Yuugi said, and she left with the other technician. Kaiba also had his helmet on, the last of the gel draining away. Behind them, on the floor, was a long, black box, a machine that hummed, just loud enough to seem like a third presence in the room. 

A fourth presence. Yami came out of the Puzzle, studying the proceedings with his usual nonchalant curiosity. He went to Kaiba, still burning a hole in the glass with his stare, his arms crossed. Their faces were inches apart, Yami peering intently into his face and Kaiba none the wiser. 

 _Handsome,_ Yami said, and Yuugi privately agreed, noting the strong, slender lines of his jaw, his mouth. _I can’t wait to meet him._

 _We're just showing him the inside of the Puzzle,_ Yuugi said. _Nothing else._

Kaiba stirred out of his silent reverie, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on his arm.

“Yuugi. Am I going to encounter your so-called nameless condition in the Drift?” he said, turning his head.

“Yes,” Yuugi said. 

“Does it take any particular form?”

Yuugi looked at Yami, standing well within arm’s reach of Kaiba, if he were solid. Yami gave him a knowing smile and nudged him out, settling into their body with relaxed ease, like he was waking up from a long afternoon nap.

“It looks like me,” he said, leaning forward on the stool, draping his hands between his knees, still with that same smile. Kaiba blinked and narrowed his eyes, struck by some sudden recognition. At the very least, he’d noticed _something_.

“Another riddle?” he growled.

“You solved the first one well enough,” Yami said. “Is there anything I should know about _you,_ Kaiba?”

“Nothing of note,” Kaiba said. 

“Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

“Give it a shot.”

They locked eyes, a feeling like fire catching in Yami’s hands. 

A light turned on behind the glass window, revealing Pegasus, sitting behind a long console in a small command room, wearing his black eye patch. Yami relaxed his smile, letting the tension go without further argument, the fire flickering out. Now was not the time to start a battle of wills. That was later.

“Hi, dream team. Are you ready?” Pegasus said, his voice coming through the intercom crisp and clear. “Names for the record, please.” 

“Ranger Seto Kaiba,” Kaiba said, with the polished, glassy tones of a pilot.

“Ranger Yuugi Mutou,” Yuugi said, taking over once more and sitting up straight as Yami vanished back into the Puzzle. To clean the place up a little, maybe? He smiled at the thought.

“Excellent,” Pegasus said, leaning back in his chair, lacing his hands together. “Kaiba-boy, I know Commander Ishtar is your preferred chanteuse for this sort of thing, but you'll have to make do with me today."

Kaiba's only response was an apathetic shrug.

"This test will measure the combined rate of your neural oscillations to establish baseline parameters for Cortex polymerization. This will be a slow-entry Drift, with a mutual-image protocol, and will end when you've been below the Anno neurological threshold for at least ten minutes. As you enter Drift, focus on what is neutral and calming. Do I have to remind you not to chase RABITS? No? Terrific. You shouldn't see them anyway. And… lights out.”

The light behind the glass window went out, hiding Pegasus once more, and the lights of the test chamber lowered to a dim blue. The inside of the Drift helmet illuminated and the data relay gel coursed through the visor, giving the edges of Yuugi's vision an eerie green glow. Several feet away, the lights on Kaiba's helmet cast strange shadows over his face, green-black in a sea of blue. 

“Now, close your eyes,” Pegasus said. “Imagine yourself standing on the shore of a calm and tranquil beach. The waves are gentle and slow, rolling in and out, in and… Kaiba-boy, relax. Arms uncrossed.”

Yuugi, already feeling fine sand under his toes, the sun like silk on his skin, opened his eyes a fraction, chancing a glance at Kaiba. He stared at the glass for a long moment, a muscle twitching in his jaw, and then uncrossed his arms, fists falling onto his thighs. A short movement that unfolded entirely in the curve of his slouched torso, barely movement at all. And yet Yuugi felt, like a cool breath down his neck, Kaiba’s determined pride, followed by a staticky crackle of nerves. The Drift had already started.

“Where were we? Ah, yes. You stand on the beach, watching the waves,” Pegasus said, and Yuugi closed his eyes again. Back to the beach, unfurling around him like a flag: a serene shore cradled between low-slung cliffs, shrubs nestled in rocky pockets on the cliff faces. Hundreds of yards off shore, where the water dropped into the blue-black deep, he saw the plume of a whale. Walk towards the waves. Shallow and glass-green, rolling in and out, in and out, draping strings of kaiju blood across the sand under a hollow night sky, his skin crawling with fresh anxiety – with a faint start, he opened his eyes again, frowning.

“Kaiba, unclench, for God’s sake. You're spiking the readings,” Pegasus said. “Do you need a moment?”

“I’m _getting there_ ,” Kaiba snapped, buffeting Yuugi with – shame? For a razor-thin slice of a second, before he clawed it back in with raw frustration. “There was a whale and everything. Get on with it.”

No, not like this. Not with him bristling at Pegasus, simply because... Yuugi searched through the thicket of feeling, trying to name what was bothering Kaiba so much, but between _beach_ and _Pegasus_ it all felt deeply entangled. He had an idea.

“Marshal Pegasus,” he said, and swallowed. “Um. Why don’t I take us into the Drift? I know a mutual-image protocol.”

A pause, from both Kaiba and Pegasus. 

“I don't have a problem with it,” Kaiba said. 

“Well, then. Why not,” Pegasus said cautiously. "Take it away, Ranger Mutou."

And in fact the problem lifted, the weight starting to crumble away, both of them breathing that much easier. 

“Okay,” Yuugi said, shifting nervously on his stool, hands on his thighs, taking a long, slow breath as he called the image into his head. He closed his eyes and exhaled. “There’s a park on Domino’s west side, by the museum. The one with the toad statues at the entrance gate. Do you know it?”

“I know it,” Kaiba said, with a flicker of affection for the park. Maybe even nostalgia. Yuugi smiled to himself, notching this detail into memory.

“Go there,” he said. "It's a hot summer day. Everything is idle, from the trees drowsy with heat to the stray cat, asleep under a bench."

As he spoke, the park made itself around him, the lawns unrolling at his feet, every new turn revealing lush flower gardens, the trees, the dirt path meandering through the greenery, with no aim save its own pleasant whims. The air was rich with the sweet perfume of home. Long walks with his grandfather, daydreams soaring like kites in the afternoon light. _You are known here,_ he added silently, and two children giggled together by the swing set on the playground. 

“You are at the edge of the long pond,” he continued aloud, "under the oaks. The sky is clear and the tree canopies are full of light. Under the shade of the trees, the water of the pond is dark and still. When you look into the water, what do you see?”

“I see my reflection,” Kaiba said. Standard slow-entry: before Drift, before the presence of someone else, identify yourself. Yuugi leaned over the pond and saw his face on the cool surface of the waters, dimmed by the shadows above and the depths below. Just over his shoulder, Yami. 

“Breathe,” Yuugi said, as he himself inhaled, exhaled again, his chest expanding against the weight of the testing vest. “Breathe again. One more time.”

It was working. They were both relaxed. 

“Now go into the water,” Yuugi said, “and submerge.”

From his right, he heard a low, soft sound, Kaiba taking a deep breath as he slipped into the Drift. He followed him in. The Drift closed over them.

“Pilot to pilot protocol engaged. Neural handshake is strong and holding,” Pegasus said, from a thousand miles away. “You are in – ”

* * *

DARKNESS. 

That was normal.

Any moment now the Drift would unfold and show Seto Yuugi's most relaxing memories of the park. Yuugi would see his. The thought gave him no pause: there was nothing harsher in his memories here than a bruised knee, a scraped elbow kissed better. Mutual-image protocol anchored them squarely in the same mental space, the same emotion. 

 

Any moment.

 

 

Now.

 

 

 

With a twinge of unease, Seto opened his eyes and saw nothing but perfect black.

There were no walls or floors or structures of any kind. He had no sense of up or down, as though he were floating deep, deep underwater, where the light couldn't reach. Stretching out his hand, in some direction he designated _forward_ , revealed it taking shape against the dark: first the lines, then the color, like the layers of his holographic renderings. The rest of him followed. Limbs, clothes, the tips of his bangs, wafting over his eyes, and his locket, floating over his chest. 

So he was… himself, at least, intact. But he didn't remember a formless void in the park. Where was he? How long had he been here? An hour? A week? A year? A cold dread seized him, running like mercury through his blood. He’d forgotten something; something vital, life-giving. He was supposed to know. He gave it up. Something terrible was happening, and he had to stop it. But this place had all the uncompromising finality of a tomb. He sucked in a breath, a shallow, fledgling gasp of panic. No one was going to find him here. 

A spark flickered to life in the darkness, a hot yellow-white. 

Seto’s feet touched something hard, and gravity finally took hold. He landed upright, taking a defensive stance as the spark spread and grew. With rising alarm, his heart pounding in his chest, he watched as it rose higher and higher and higher, outlining a pitch-black silhouette in restless fire, a man with wild hair. Yuugi? 

The man opened his eyes, the same white fire flaring out of them. In the center of his forehead opened a third, gold eye, a blaze of scorching splendor. 

His gaze dug into Seto like hands into soft sand, searching. For what? Despite the sense of power radiating from the man, running over Seto's skin with an inexplicable thrill – in the presence of eternity, or something like it – Seto didn’t look away. He straightened to his full height, forcing himself to breathe slow and even, fists clenched. The Drift might reveal his fear, but like hell he was going to fucking act like it.

“So the abyss gazes back,” he said. 

The man smiled, a sly shifting of fire around his shoulders. 

“Is that what you think I am?” the man said, in a rich voice, dry with amusement – the same voice that Yuugi spoke with when he didn’t quite seem like Yuugi. A faint shiver ran down Seto’s spine, not unpleasant.

“That, or you took half a tab before we went into Drift,” he said. 

“Ha,” the man said. “Not quite.”

“Well, whatever you are,” Seto said, “I have somewhere else to be. If you don’t mind.”

He didn’t want to be here a second longer, a desire that clanged as loud as a bell, all of him vibrating with the force of it. This place was the opposite of claustrophobic – a vastness without limit – but the same kind of suffocating.

“Why don't we play a game, Kaiba?” The man said. “You tell me two truths and a lie, and I’ll guess the lie.”

His tone brooked no argument. Despite the fire, its flames curling and uncurling in an unseen current, Seto felt the suggestion like ice under his feet, over a cold winter deep. If he stepped too hard, with all his weight... Of course he’d take the game. That at least gave him some measure of control. 

“What are the stakes?” Seto said.

“If I lose, I’ll let you out. If you lose, you’ll have to find the way out yourself,” the man said. 

So there was a way out. That bit of knowledge alone cascaded, fractal-like, through Seto’s thoughts. The darkness had at least two dimensions: _in_ and _out_ , which meant it had a structure, and it was solvable. It was not just _nothing_. 

“I accept,” Seto said. 

“When you’re ready,” the man said, and Seto paused. He understood perfectly well why the man had chosen two truths and a lie, in the Drift, where every emotion announced itself. They were strangers, after all, and he sensed in the man as much suspicious, braced curiosity about him as he had towards the man. Not just _who are you_ , but _are you a threat?_  

A threat to this place? No. Seto knew he was no threat to the darkness that ebbed and flowed around them, almost breath-like in its rise and fall, an emptiness somehow resonating with life. A threat to… 

"First. You’re not Yuugi,” he said, and cast a glance around them. The Drift was supposed to be full of memory. But there was nothing to see here… 

“Second. You yourself don’t know who you are.” 

“Do you understand how to play this?” the man said, with arch humor, although his tone twisted with frustration.

Seto smiled, a sideways twitch of his lips. “Third. I lose the game.”

The man seemed to flicker, briefly, those bright, burning eyes blinking in surprise. He said nothing, presumably working through the logic, and then chuckled, a low, deep sound that vibrated through Seto.

“Oh, you are arrogant,” he said, the flames around his shoulders dancing with pointed energy. “I’m starting to see what kind of person you are. Tread lightly, Kaiba, or you’ll see what kind of person _I_ am.”

“Nothing more than a bad dream,” Seto said, and the man fixed him with a look.

“Are you sure about that?” he said, smiling – a magnificent, terrible smile, a slash of light cutting through the darkness like a whip, and on instinct Seto threw his arm up to shield his face – 

The darkness upended, all his senses upending with it. A wild, dizzying fall, flailing for a hold and again finding nothing, nothing, nothing – with a sudden, rough thud, an _oof!_ of surprise, he crashed onto a hard surface, rolling and tumbling several times before he came to a stop. With a powerful surge of anger, Seto realized he’d been caught and released, like a firefly in a jar. 

But, joy of joys, sweet fucking relief – he’d been shaken out into a place with _substance_ . Underneath him was a plain, unpolished stone floor of an unremarkable sandy color. Limestone, if he had to guess. He lifted himself onto all fours, gasping for breath, his temples slick with sweat. He wanted to wring himself out like a wet cloth, squeeze out every last drop of that strange void. It was not somewhere _anyone_ should be. 

He staggered to his feet, looking around. He was in a narrow stone corridor, extending for several yards on either side of him until it hit corners and turned. The corridor was lit with torches, their soft flames turning the air warm and clear. A solitude spread around him, like a pair of wings, unfurling.

In the wall there was a door of dull black metal, with a stylized gold eye centered in the top panel – the same gold eye the shadow man bore on his forehead. Thick black veins spread out around the eye, bizarrely organic in their appearance, like a fungus had set into the metal and warped it. Despite the heat of the torchlight, Seto's skin prickled with cold. 

Hesitantly, he reached out and pressed his hand flat against the door. 

It throbbed under his palm. A strong, unequivocal pulse. A single deep drumbeat of life.

He yanked his hand away, heart thundering in his throat. There was something behind the door, a presence, _sensing_ him. The shadow man. He had no plans to go back in. 

Standing alone in the corridor, Seto started to sense someone else, more familiar than whatever (whoever) lay behind the door, but only just. Searching for him, beckoning. His racing heart slowed to a firm, cautious trot, ready to bolt at the faintest sign of danger.

“Yuugi?” he said, a question he tossed like a stone into the silence. 

An echo of response, coming from his right. Yuugi was… not here, but _somewhere_. If they were still in Drift – and Seto had no reason to assume they weren’t, although this was a fucking weird Drift – there were ways to find him.

He bent and unbent his dog tag, several times, until it broke in half along the crease. Using the sharp corner, he scratched an arrow into the wall next to the door, pointing right. Then he slunk down the corridor and turned the corner, into another non-descript stone corridor, stopping every so often to make another scratch in the wall. The thought of getting lost in here was more unnerving than he wanted to admit. Who the fuck _was_ Yuugi?

But Seto let the beacon of Yuugi's presence guide him through the corridors, nudging left instead of right, taking the stone stairs up instead of down, although he moved without a sound and tucked the broken half of his dog tag between his knuckles like a razor blade. He was no stranger to stealing, unseen and unheard, through a silent house, praying the night kept its sleepers sealed away.

There were other doors, all different, all closed. He stopped briefly to investigate one, ancient and weathered. Made of rough wooden slats, it lacked the unnatural feel of the black door. Carefully, he pressed his hand against it. A faint rattling and a distant howl, like a wind barreling past. He slid his hand along the surface, applying pressure, and it started to swing open, his arm extending over the threshold.

“ – _aiba?”_

He whipped around, catching a large splinter in his palm along the way. The door fell shut.

“Yuugi,” he muttered. The splinter was slanted into his palm. Gritting his teeth, he eased it out, with a thin, bright streak of blood, and flicked it aside. Then he stalked down the corridor until he reached the end, a landing at the top of a stairwell.

He edged down the stairwell, half-crouching to avoid the low ceiling. As soon as his boot hit the bottom step, he heard a rush of footsteps, and then Yuugi was there.

“Oh, thank God, you're here,” Yuugi said, with a relieved smile, but Seto gave him only half a glance, struck by the room he’d just entered. They were standing in an enormous, Escher-esque stone vault, designed on the logic of some arcane geometry that defied even Seto’s understanding. Stairways climbed the walls in every direction, leading up, down, sideways; leading into dim, distant corners or dropping off into thin air. There were more doors, more corridors, leading to parts unknown, and Seto, who had hidden more than enough secrets in his life, could feel secrets hidden here, too... lurking in the walls, in the shadows between flickers of torch-light.

“Are you alright?” Yuugi said.

“I’m terrific,” Seto snapped. “I went into Drift and ended up in some fucking bottomless pit somewhere. What the _hell_ is – ”

Just behind Yuugi, there was another Yuugi. 

They had the same wild, colorful hair, the same lean stature. They wore the same clothes, sleeveless black shirts and dark blue fatigue pants. But where Yuugi carried himself with warmth and welcome, like he’d chosen to flout the world with good cheer alone, this other Yuugi was decidedly cooler in his bearing, his expression more detached, reserved. A gaze that took everything in, and let nothing out. He leveled a bold look at Seto, mouth curving in a smile. 

“What did you do?!” Yuugi said, rounding on this other Yuugi. He was also several shades darker, with thicker brows and a strong nose.

“We played a game," he said. "He won.”

“You’re the man with the glowing eye?” Seto said. “The nameless condition?!”

“Yami,” he said. “You can call me Yami.”

“I’ll call you whatever I want, you bastard,” Seto growled. “Yuugi, what _is_ this? Where are we?!”

“I’ll explain,” Yuugi said quickly, holding out both hands in a placating gesture. He glanced at Yami, hesitantly biting his lip. “I know... this is unexpected. And _that_ was _not_ part of the plan. But we thought it might be better if you saw this for yourself, first.”

“Okay. I’ve seen it. Now explain,” Seto said. 

 “So, that gold puzzle I wear,” Yuugi said, miming the shape with his hands. “It’s an ancient Egyptian puzzle. A holey burr, if you want to get technical. I solved it a few years ago, and when I did, Yami woke up. He’s… a spirit. He was inside it, and now he's kind of… inside me, like a possession. It's like we’re in our own Drift, all the time. This is what it looks like.” 

With a renewed spike of anger, Seto frowned. “That’s a stupid joke. Tell me the truth.”

Yuugi exhaled, very calm, holding himself with quiet steel. “That’s the truth. I won't lie to you.”

“We’re in the Drift,” Yami added. “We _can’t_ lie to you.”

True. No lies in the Drift. Their conviction was built into the walls, the vaulted ceilings, as hard and unbreakable as the stones underfoot: they believed what they were saying.

Seto scowled, mouth half-open, at a loss. Yuugi’s explanation made no fucking sense, and yet… their meeting in the forest. The way Yuugi had out-maneuvered him during the staff fight, like his mind worked twice as fast. _It looks like me._

He caught Yami’s gaze, a spark in his crimson eyes – the lingering, unmistakable traces of the tremendous power Seto had felt in the void behind the door. It still unsettled him.

An ancient Egyptian puzzle? With… a spirit? _Yami_ ? Yes, Seto lived in a world where giant beasts crawled out of some unknown dimension from a hole in the ocean floor, and where a complex marriage of neuroscience and software engineering allowed him to _see_ how his brother saw him (stubborn, proud, stuck.) He trusted his senses to tell him what was true, and when he didn’t, the science did the rest: the kaiju were carbon-based lifeforms, and he’d written part of the code himself.

Yuugi had a tentative look in his eye, like he was hoping once the dust of Seto’s bafflement settled, he’d understand it. Maybe even embrace it. 

But power did not lie sleeping in gold artifacts, waiting to be awakened. There was no _science_ there. The pieces refused to click. An old feeling was coming over him, like a cold hand on the back of his neck, a spreading chill. _I don’t understand_ was not an answer, never an answer. To offer that was tantamount to surrender.

He shoved his desperation down.

“No,” he said. “Bullshit. This is some kind of – hallucination. Some fucked-up RABIT. A glitch in the Drift.”

“I am _none_ of those things,” Yami said. “Kaiba, listen. You – ” 

“Okay,” Yuugi interrupted, swift but patient, lifting a hand. Yami fell silent. “This was the wrong approach. We’ll try something else. Do any of these doors look familiar?”

Seto stiffened, casting his eyes around the massive room once more in cursory inspection.

“If this is a trick, I’m not going to fall for it,” he said. 

“It’s not a trick. One of these doors will take you back to a more normal Drift, to your own memories of the park,” Yuugi said, giving him a small smile. “Or you can stay here until we leave Drift. Whatever you want. It’s up to you.”

Two feelings seized Seto at once: first, suspicion, buzzing hotly through his nerves, screaming at him to reject Yuugi's offer. This had to be a trap. There was nothing beyond the doors, except the deep, hollow throat of more infinite darkness. But also, with an almost breathless unfolding in his chest, a tight, crumpled thing coming undone, relief. He had thrown half his energy into bulwarking against panic, his anger would soon burn through the other half, and he did, in fact, want. Somewhere calm and quiet. A place, and time, to think.

A hopeless desire. Another confession of defeat. 

He stood there, the word _no_ burning like a mouthful of hot coal. Say it. _Don't coddle me. Don't insult me._ Force it out. Pushing his tongue against his teeth until it hurt. 

"How about this. Can I see that, please?" Yuugi said, holding out his hand for the half-piece of Seto's dog tag, and Seto gave it to him. Both he and Yami watched as Yuugi tucked both hands behind his back, hiding the tag from sight.

Then Yuugi held out both fists.

"If you pick the tag, you stay. If you pick empty, you leave," he said.

"The right," Seto said, and Yuugi turned over his right fist to reveal an empty palm. He waved it towards the doors, gesturing for Seto to go ahead, and an almost unspeakable relief washed through him all over again.

So he looked around at the doors again, _really_ looking this time, counting all that he could see. Seven total. All the way across the room, at the top of a stone stairway, was a door of polished black glass, torchlight flickering across its sleek face. He brushed past Yuugi and Yami and walked over, climbing the stairs, pausing on the landing, eyeing his reflection in the glass. It was the same door he’d installed for his office at Kaiba Corp, bored with Gozaburo’s uninspired taste.

“Yuugi,” he said, looking down at Yuugi over the edge of the landing. His voice rang in the emptiness of the room, the echoes bouncing back to him. “I’m going to figure this out.”

“I know!” Yuugi called back. 

“And _you_ ,” Seto said, fixing his glower on Yami, “don’t play with fire. You’ll burn yourself.” 

Yami gave him a wry smile. “Sound advice.”

Seto pulled the door open by its steel handle and went into the park. The door fell shut behind him, sinking backwards into the foliage of a wild green thicket. 

The park was as peaceful as he remembered, drenched in white wine light. Bonelessly, he sank onto a bench by the playground, spreading his feet and leaning back, closing his hand over the thin, wet smear of blood on his palm. With a sigh he tilted his head back and closed his eyes, finding a shallow black behind his eyelids, entirely different from the darkness behind Yami’s door. He had no idea where to begin with what he'd just seen, and did not care to start just yet. It was enough just to soak in the unchanging tableau of this memory, a fragment of time suspended in amber, and listen to the delighted chirping of a three-year-old Mokuba under the slide.

He opened his eyes, lifting his head. Standing in front of him was himself, eight years old, as gangly and shy as a newborn foal. His small face was grave with concern.

“Don’t worry,” Seto said, with a heavy smile. “We always find a way out.”

* * *

“Rise and shine, Rangers,” Pegasus said, as Yuugi opened his eyes. “We'll want to nudge some of these numbers up, but it's an excellent start.”

Yuugi took off the helmet, the cool air of the test chamber hitting his warm, sweating face all at once. He tugged out the hair tie and shook his hair out, coaxing the volume back with light teases. His physicality re-anchored with a vengeance: his back ached from carrying the weight of the Spinal Clamp, and he had to pee. The last traces of the Drift floated away from him, like a current past a boat.

The light came on behind the window and Yuugi blinked, squinting at Pegasus.

“Yuugi-boy! How do you feel?” Pegasus said. 

“I feel fine,” Yuugi said truthfully.

“Wonderful. Kaiba-boy?”

Several feet away, Kaiba was also emerging from the Drift, pulling his shoulders up with a soft inhale. He stood up, taking his helmet off and tucking it under his arm. He looked down at his hand, eyes narrowed in scrutiny. Years ago, when Yami was not much more than a bristling presence and Yuugi was trying to understand the dizzying moments when he faded in and out of himself, his days spliced with strange darkness, he’d read that finding your own hand in a dream made you realize you were dreaming. Maybe Kaiba had heard the same thing.

“Kaiba? Are you with us?" Pegasus said. 

Kaiba let his hand drop. His icy gaze flicked sideways to Yuugi. He was holding breathlessly still, his expression frozen in cold-blooded study; calling to mind a bird of prey at the top of its arc, weightless, at any moment about to turn and dive with open talons. Yuugi straightened, his heart thumping with quiet alarm in his throat, feeling for all the world like a rabbit in the grass.

“ _Ranger Kaiba_ ,” Pegasus said, his voice firing like a gunshot. Kaiba’s attention snapped to him. “You did well. It’s time to go home.”

“Finally,” Kaiba growled. Without another word, he stalked out of the test chamber, one hand already scrabbling over the fastenings on the Drivesuit. 

Yuugi slid off his seat, clutching his helmet in both hands, hesitating. His natural inclination was to talk things out, put Kaiba at ease as much as possible, but a firm sense of distance welled up in the wake of Kaiba’s exit. 

“A word before you go, Yuugi,” Pegasus said.

“Yes, Marshal,” Yuugi said. 

“Your mutual-image protocol was lovely, you put him half to sleep,” Pegasus said, motioning down at the monitors on the console with one hand. “Then his heart rate skyrocketed, and your neural handshake almost went completely to pieces. I’m assuming he met his _other_ drift partner?”

“Yes,” Yuugi said.

“Is he here?”

Yami wafted out of the Puzzle to stand beside Yuugi, in a languid contrapposto, almost aristocratic. The dim blue light of the test chamber fell through him, warping the color of his hair, his skin; he seemed a ghost, his blonde bangs turned pale green. 

Even though Pegasus wore an eyepatch, Yuugi still felt a quiet twinge of premonition, a tug on a string with one end tied deep within him. Hidden from view was the Millennium Eye, and all the unknown power it held, and all the things Pegasus said he didn’t know about the Millennium Items. Yami felt it too; his restless impatience vibrating through that invisible string. 

Without the distraction of other, louder things, other people, like Dartz and Rafael and Kaiba, the magnetic attraction between the two Millennium Items warped the air. When Commander Ishtar had visited a few weeks ago, with her Millennium Necklace, it had been the same.  

“We’re both here, sir,” Yuugi said cautiously. 

“What did you do to Kaiba?” 

Yuugi ceded to Yami, who flowed into their body, as smooth as water. “We played a game.” 

“Oh, how fun. Did you get what you wanted?” Pegasus said, his easy tone doing nothing to disguise the pointed, all-too-knowing look on his long, intelligent face.

“No,” Yami said, with a begrudging ripple of admiration. “But I will.”

Pegasus released a clipped sigh and leaned forward, folding his arms on the console and fixing Yami with a firm stare. 

“You know, I’ve lost quite a few Ranger teams to the things out there, but I’ve lost even more to the things in here,” he said, tapping a fingertip to his temple. “To suspicion, distrust, and all the petty, nagging little doubts that crawl in under the skin. Drift margins can widen _and_ close."

Yami frowned, stung with irritation. “Are we not allowed to wonder about – ?”

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Pegasus snapped. “Do more than just _wonder_ about it. I mean find a way to talk! Ask! _Communicate!_ ”

Yami stiffened, the urge to argue heating like iron on his tongue; but Yuugi swiftly reclaimed his body. There was no reason to be so damn stubborn about this. 

“Yes sir. Understood,” he said, as Yami folded away, smarting from the scolding.

“Fantastic. Now get out of here."

* * *

 

Yuugi threw a polite salute and left the test chamber. 

In the monitoring chamber, Pegasus spread the data across the wide touch-screen with a sweep of his fingers. The data in its raw form was beautiful, every line jumping and quivering as two people made contact in the purest, most uncorrupted of ways. He liked to think of it as the score of a symphony, writing itself a measure ahead of the melody, the notes of Yuugi’s delta waves tuning to Kaiba’s as they reached stage N3.

The Other Yuugi’s neural signature, or Yami’s, or whatever they’d named him, threaded nicely across the screen, meeting Yuugi’s and entwining like first and second violins. It met Kaiba’s like a violinist throwing their instrument aside, rolling up their sleeves, and storming across stage to pummel the cellist. Contact, after a fashion.

He swept the data along, minute by minute, until he found what he was looking for, with a twinge of concern: an incomprehensible field of data. Nothing but noise, as though every musician in the orchestra had decided to play completely different tunes in completely different keys. 

And then… no data of all. For a brief stretch, the sensors had recorded total neural silence – the most alarming, as though Kaiba and Yuugi had simply vanished from the test chamber, taking all their brain activity with them...

Followed by more noise, rushing back in a brief crackle, and the rest played out from there. A near-break in neural handshake. Kaiba pulling away, until he didn’t. A successful drop below the Anno threshold. 

Kaiba was furious about what happened, sure. But he was not rejecting it. Good for Kaiba-boy. Pegasus didn't even need the Eye to see how he was feeling that morning. 

He laced his hands together, frowning over the data. He’d seen this anomaly before, once or twice, in Yuugi’s Drifts with Jounouchi, but never to this extent. His best guess was some effect the Millennium Puzzle had on Drift. Mixing ancient magic with modern science was a risky little game. 

And now what? 

As if on cue, his phone beeped with an email alert.

FROM: SETO KAIBA <seto.kaiba@ppdc.navy.mil>  
SUBJECT: slow-entry drift test data

_This is a formal request for all data collected from the Anchorage test chamber for all slow-entry and combat Drift tests (including KJ x HH) in the past twelve months, as well as chamber maintenance reports for the same period. Any hoops I have to jump?_

SETO KAIBA  
Ranger, Naval Branch  
Pan-Pacific Defense Corps

Pegasus smiled as he swiped back through the screens. Nothing wrong with letting Kaiba test the edge of his formidable wits on _this_ particular knot.

FROM: MAXIMILIAN PEGASUS <maximilian.pegasus@ppdc.navy.mil>  
SUBJECT: RE: slow-entry drift test data

_None. Your request is approved. See attached._

MAXIMILIAN J. PEGASUS  
Marshal, Naval Branch  
Pan-Pacific Defense Corps

* * *

 

Yuugi did not see Kaiba again until the flight back to Domino, the entirety of his life in Alaska jammed into a suitcase and a small duffel bag. The small plane was almost full, carrying engineers and J-techs heading over to assist with repairs on White Dragon. He sat in a window seat just ahead of the wing, Anzu in the aisle seat beside him, absorbing his last glimpse of the Alaskan sunset. Soft, flaming light washed across the mountains, turning the slender white streaks of snow a brilliant orange-pink.

There was a small pit of anxiety in his stomach. There was nothing ahead of him that he had not practiced or prepared for, over nearly three long years: Jaegers, drifting, kaiju. The only thing left to do now was do it. But it was not lost on him that he was a Ranger now because, in the last month alone, one Ranger had been injured, and two had died…

 _No matter what, we’re in it together, Aibou_ , Yami said, his presence lying across Yuugi’s thoughts like a blanket. 

 _Yeah_ , Yuugi said, only somewhat reassured. _Do you remember the last time we were on a plane?_

As the plane took off, Yami took over, plunging into the thunderous rush of speed and gravity. He gripped the armrests with both hands, slightly thrilled. Right in the belly of the beast, with no way to fight and nowhere to run. Wherever – _whenever_ Yami came from, Yuugi thought, they definitely did not have airplanes. No wonder it was unnerving. 

The plane tilted, revealing Dartz’s battleship, the Paradius, still in the harbor thousands of feet below them, a great, ugly grey streak on the waters. 

“Good-fucking-bye,” Anzu muttered, leaning over in her seat to watch the battleship disappear from view in the porthole window. Then she clamped her headphones on and opened her book, settling in for the flight. 

They broke through the clouds, into the glassy, blue-black bowl of an Arctic night. The last remains of the day lingered on the horizon as a thin orange seam of light. Yami did nothing but stare out the window, watching the single light at the end of the wing. _Here we are, aloft._

An hour into the flight, Anzu looked over at him, pushing her headphones down around her neck. 

“Something on your mind?” she said. Yami gave her a wordless pout. Nothing. Everything. Kaiba’s defiant solution to his game; Yuugi handily rescuing the Drift test, offering Kaiba a way out with two empty fists.

“Yuugi told you about the Drift test?” he said.

“He said some things,” Anzu said, smiling. 

Yami huffed, slouching slightly in his seat, simmering in the low heat of his lingering mortification. Irritating feeling.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Anzu said. “We’ll figure it out. I'll help.”

True. He nodded slowly, gaze drifting back towards the window and the massive jet engine below the wing.

“Anzu,” he said, and she went _mm?_ in reply. “How does an airplane stay up?”

“Let’s find out,” she said, pulling out her phone, and he leaned in.

“Newton’s third law of motion,” Kaiba said, somewhere above them. In tandem, they startled, looking up to find him standing in the aisle next to Anzu’s seat, resting one forearm on the seat in front of her. He loomed over them, half-shadowed in the single white light over their seats. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

He locked eyes with Yami, who straightened in his seat. Even though he’d lost the game, and was no closer to knowing what he wanted to know… Kaiba had more than answered his challenge. That alone had a smile tugging on his mouth. 

“Okay, professor,” Anzu said, putting her phone down. “Go for it.”

Kaiba swooped his hand forward, palm down, in a flat line. “The engines generate thrust, which is the force that moves the plane in the direction of travel. Working against it is drag, which is essentially air resistance.”

He paused, as though allowing a moment for understanding to sink in, and then swooped his hand again, rising on a slope. “Next is lift. The most basic explanation of lift is that the wings of a plane pull air down from above. This lifts the plane up, and is opposed by gravity, in this case called weight. All four forces are vector quantities, described with magnitude and direction. We know what they do, and we know _what they are."_

Again his gaze fell on Yami, with untempered disdain. Kaiba's tone was not lost on him. Yuugi pressed in, as far as he could go without simply taking over, watchful and ready to intervene.

"Well, you didn't get out of your seat to tell us about airplanes,” Anzu said. 

"Your kitschy costume jewelry," Kaiba growled. "Give it to me."

A faint frisson of alarm ran through Yami as his hand flew to the Millennium Puzzle, clutching it with a firm grip. Anzu also flung her hand out, sideways, covering both his hand and the Puzzle. She glared up at Kaiba with raised eyebrows, the stubbornness of a brick wall against the momentum of a wave.

“What the hell for?” she said. 

He fixed Anzu with a questioning frown. "And you are?"

"Petty Officer Anzu Mazaki, Second Class,” Anzu said. “Why do you want the Puzzle?"

"Your friend made some bold claims. I'd like to test them for myself."

"How?" Yami started, heated. “What you saw wasn’t enough? What more do you need?!”

At a forceful, invisible nudge from Yuugi, and the anger that flared across Kaiba’s face, he bit his tongue, annoyed all over again by the unpleasant, acid flavor of regret. Kaiba also started forward, like a kick of sparks, and caught himself. For a brief instant, his eyes fluttered towards the ceiling, visibly summoning restraint. A painfully obvious détente.

“Non-destructive testing,” he said, with a huff. “Like x-ray fluorescence, among other things. You’ll get your puzzle back, intact and undamaged. You have my word.”

Still, Yami hesitated. 

 _What do you think?_ he said.

 _It’s up to you,_ Yuugi said. _I think a gesture in good faith could go a long way. But you’re the one going with him, and he's obviously going to take it apart._

Yami mulled it over. Yuugi was his tether to the material world; it was Yuugi’s hands he touched with, Yuugi’s eyes he saw with, Yuugi’s mouth he spoke with. He had no idea what would happen if Kaiba took the Puzzle apart and put it back together, without Yuugi nearby to catch him.

But, something about Kaiba made part of him vibrate like a tuning fork – a hit and a shiver, every time. _That_ part made him want to find out. 

“How about some insurance?” Anzu said, tilting her finger at Kaiba’s collar, where two thin chains disappeared below the folds of his sweatshirt: one, the standard ball chain of dog tags, and the other, a more elegant strand of tiny silver links. “You took that locket off for the tryouts. Why don’t you trade?”

Kaiba’s hand flew to the center of his chest, a gesture both habitual and defensive. Yami glanced at Anzu, trading triumphant smiles.

“I like those terms,” he said, tugging the cord of the Puzzle over his head and hooking a finger through the gold loop, lifting it up in offering. With his desired prize so close at hand, Kaiba begrudgingly assented, reaching around to the back of his neck and pulling the chain up and over. The locket rose out of the curve of his collar: flat and silver, with a hinge, the surface scuffed with age.

“Did you ask the pilot if you could test her airplane before you boarded?” Yami said, as they made the exchange, Puzzle for locket. He held his hand open as Kaiba dropped the necklace into his palm, locket first, coiling the chain on top, fingers hesitating ever so slightly.

“This is a narrow-body Kaiba Corp X-10 Chariot twinjet. I made it,” Kaiba retorted, cradling the Puzzle in one hand. “Do not lose that."

“Kaiba, I’m going with you,” Yami said patiently, and Kaiba made a face like a cat taking a swat to the nose. Anzu's mouth crinkled, struggling to keep her composure. Yuugi finally took over, closing his hand over the locket.

“Don't worry, I'll keep it safe,” he said. Kaiba blinked, gaze skating over him. Probably marking the differences between him and Yami, whatever it was he saw in their face that had changed. Joey claimed they had their own smiles; Anzu said it was the difference between dreamy and distant. “Please don’t lose that, either. It’s… it means a lot to me.”

Kaiba nodded, a light tilt of the head.

“If you take it apart, make a wish,” Yuugi said. “If you solve it, you get your wish granted.”

The Puzzle glinted as Kaiba turned it over, measuring its heft, its substance; maybe considering the physics of a wish-granting machine. Calculating the vectors of his own desires.

“Can I wish for a world without superstitious nonsense?" he said, with an arch half-smile.

"You can't divide by zero."

“Watch me,” Kaiba tossed back, as he turned, heading up the aisle.

Yuugi draped the locket around his neck and rose, hanging his hands on the headrest in front of him, watching Kaiba make his way to the front of the cabin. A tall, poised silhouette, unbothered by the uneasy tremble of turbulence. He took several deep, deliberate breaths, trying to fill the nervous hole in his chest, a hole that grew like it was being chipped apart from the inside. Step by step, the distance widened.

Far ahead, Kaiba opened the overhead compartment, back arching as he tugged his duffel bag out with one hand. Only a distant, dull glimpse of gold, tucked against his sweatshirt, told Yuugi that he was still holding the Puzzle. 

 _Are you alright?_ he said.

 _Yes, I'm right here_ , Yami said. _We might spend the rest of the flight together after all. Wait... I feel_

All at once, 

without warning:

silence. 

 _Yami?_ Yuugi said. _Other Me? Feel what?_

No response. 

Not just silence. Absence. He suddenly felt _himself_ , in a way he hadn’t felt in years, with almost dizzying clarity; like he’d opened his eyes only to find himself hundreds of feet in the air, teetering on the sheer edge of a cliff. His own presence, plummeting into place. Here, now, intact, with a thousand different feelings rushing and tumbling through his head.

“Yuugi? What’s wrong?” Anzu said, grabbing his elbow, the weight and length of each finger distinct through his sleeve. The tones of her voice were bizarrely clear, making music out of the words.

His mouth opened; nothing came out. He couldn’t answer her, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of being. Every beat of his heart was making itself known to his hand, pressed against his chest; every blink revealed another color, all the same old colors but now as bright and raging as a bonfire at night. The rose pink band of Anzu's headphones alone was giving him a headache. Like leaving Drift, if Drift ended with a hammer blow to the nerves, a pure impact of sight and sound and touch.

Kaiba slid the duffel bag into the compartment, slammed it shut, and slipped something into his pocket, with a secretive motion. Oh. 

“He took a piece off the Puzzle,” Yuugi said, falling back into his seat, breathless. Yami was gone from his head. 

Anzu gave him a long, searching look, her expression etched with concern.

"I'm getting it back," she muttered, unbuckling her seat belt. "I don't care. I'll break his arm if I have to."

"No, stay. Please," Yuugi said, clutching her arm as she jolted up from her seat. "It's okay. No need to break any bones."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," he said, and she slowly sank back down. "I just... It was just… a shock. I didn’t expect it. Don't go anywhere."

He keeled against her arm, grateful for how readily she slid lower to hold his weight, her shoulder dipping for his cheek. The odd, brilliant release of senses was fading, everything dulling to a more familiar texture, the dust settling. But he still wanted her here with him, strong and far more difficult to carry away. 

He fumbled for Kaiba's locket and popped the clasp, revealing an old photo of a child who could only be Mokuba, with round cheeks and a huge, thrilled smile.

"That’s Mokuba, right? God, that’s cute," Anzu said. “What is he, like five years old there?"

"Looks like it," Yuugi said, clapping the locket shut and tucking it safely down his shirt. A fair trade, he decided, and curled closer to Anzu.

* * *

"Wait, so you have it right now?" Mokuba said, side by side with Seto on the bed. 

"It's in my bag," Seto said, nodding his head in the direction of his duffel bag. 

"Can I see it?"

Seto rolled off the bed and onto his feet, leaving a long, shallow valley of warmth. From his duffel bag, he extracted a bundled-up sweater. 

He wedged himself into the same spot and unwrapped the sweater in his lap, revealing, but not touching, the gold Puzzle nestled in the folds. A pentahedron, grooved with geometric lines, and missing one large piece. Not pure gold, Mokuba realized, due to the color: dark and somewhat tarnished.

"That's it?" he said. He wasn't sure what he expected. Seto's story about pitch-black Drifts and pulsing doorways and drift partner doppelgängers was almost too weird to believe, a daydream with teeth. And at the heart of it was _this_ , this burr puzzle that would've been right at home at some gauche fashion show, if not for the pristine craftsmanship, the obvious weight of untold centuries.

"That's it," Seto said, like he didn't quite believe it either.

"Where's the missing piece?" Mokuba said. Seto fished the piece out of his pocket. Flat, with crenellated edges and a stylized eye. 

"It looks like Pegasus’ eye," Mokuba said, holding it up to the light, frowning into the narrow black pupil. “And Isis’ necklace. And Ryou’s dreamcatcher thing.”

“Yes. It's the shiny gold tip of an iceberg,” Seto said. His eyes were fixed on the Puzzle, watching for movement, some flicker or shadow. If they believed Seto’s new drift partner’s explanation, then there was _someone_ in there, against all known science. And all the other gold things?  

Mokuba reached forward with the piece, aiming for the empty slot in the Puzzle. Seto caught his wrist in firm denial and took the piece back.

So he'd taken at least some of it as truth. Maybe even feared the thing, a little.

At this, Mokuba’s heart sank, heavy with a dense frustration. He wanted Seto to try, to stop closing himself off, to welcome people with an open hand instead of a closed fist; he did _not_ want Seto to deal with this crazy shit.

“Niisama,” he said. “I know I made you promise, but if you want to break it...”

“No. I made it, and I’m going to keep it,” Seto said, wrapping the sweater around the Puzzle once more. He leaned forward and set it with a muffled but decisive thunk on the tray table beside the bed. 

“Why?” Mokuba couldn’t help but ask. Seto didn’t reply, not right away. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, tilting his head, gaze wandering around the room, thinking. He was far more relaxed than when he’d first walked in. Word by word, all the trapped, pent-up energy had unraveled and released him.

“Yuugi might be fucking with me,” he said, at length, a half-mutter, his cheek in his hand. “But I don’t – I don’t think… I feel like he's…”

He trailed off, looking at Mokuba, and dropped his hand. 

“I'm tired." 

Not a deflection this time so much as a quiet, bare-faced plea to stop, to rest. No doubt he had his own reasons, all of them still too raw and rough to touch.

"Then go to bed," Mokuba said. 

Seto sat for a moment, motionless.

"I will," he said, easing a sigh into the dim evening. "Tell me about the campaign." 

"Okay," Mokuba said happily, content to have Seto here a while longer. "So it's this space-fantasy campaign Ryou wrote. It's set in a distant galaxy, like Star Wars, but sort of... post-apocalyptic? Like, we're wandering the ruins of an empire, trying to figure out what happened to them…"

On and on, soft and low. As Mokuba talked, weaving the tale of a long-dead empire, abandoned starships adrift like ghosts around indifferent planets, Seto shifted lower along the bed, until his head was resting against Mokuba’s arm. His occasional hums of reply soon softened into deep, even breathing, his body completely slack, arms hugging his waist, even his mouth tracing only a gentle curve. Fast asleep, as expected, and dreamless, hopefully.

Mokuba let him sleep.

He was attempting a left-handed sketch of the moose on his tablet, the moose propped up on his knees, when the door swung open. Pegasus leaned in, with a glint of his gold eye.

“Kaiba-boy, are you in h – ah.”

Mokuba looked up, frowning in silent question.

“Your brother is past his curfew,” Pegasus said. "And he owes me his laptop."

At the thought of waking him up, just for that, a cold anger flooded through Mokuba. He felt Seto's weight on his arm, peaceful and comfortable, so unlike how he'd walked in, and all the weight on Seto. 

"Marshal," he said, pausing to choose his next words. “Get out."

An easy choice. The words alone gave him a delicious satisfaction, a release like sinking his teeth into a ripe fruit until it burst open and all the juices dripped. Pegasus' abrupt, surprised scowl was just a bonus.

"Excuse me?" he said, with clipped politeness.

"I don't want you to wake him up," Mokuba said. "You dragged him halfway across the planet and back in four days. He's exhausted. He’s not _doing_ anything. So if you don't mind, _sir_ , leave."

Pegasus narrowed his eye; Mokuba held his gaze, unafraid. He had not been a Ranger for nothing. 

"I see you're all tooth and nail about it," Pegasus said. "So I'll let it go, just this once. Good night.”

And he left, closing the door behind him. Mokuba breathed out, smiling with private triumph, and resumed his sketch again, with confident strokes of his fingertip. At his side, Seto stirred, his _did someone come in?_ not much more than a half-formed murmur. 

“No,” Mokuba said. “Go back to sleep.”

Seto made another small, high-pitched sound, barely a word at all, and faded out. 

He’d send him to bed soon. For now, Mokuba wanted him here, tucked away in this quiet, secret pocket of the night, with no monsters, no machines, no strange Drifts without memory. The world outside would still be there in the morning, as unpredictable as ever, waiting for them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have approx. 7432 notes on this chapter, so here's the important ones:
> 
> 1\. If “i lose the game” is true, then yami is forced to incorrectly identify a different, true statement as a lie, and loses, so kaiba wins, which makes “i lose the game” a lie, which means yami correctly identified the lie, and therefore wins, which means “I lose the game” is true and yami incorrectly identified the lie, which means kaiba wins, which means “I lose the game” is a lie, which means yami correctly identified the lie, and therefore wins, which means “I lose the game” is true and yami incorrect identified the lie, which means kaiba wins,
> 
> 2\. [this is ryou's D&D puzzle](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/7bz1h6/a_nonlinear_maze_for_your_next_wizards_lair)
> 
> chapter 6 will be posted sometime at the end of december. to quote a robot: I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
> 
> as always, very happy and grateful for your comments and kudos!


	6. Opposite Game (A-SIDE)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in between starting this chapter and posting this, a LOT of different things happened for me, not least of which was moving two thousand miles across the country for a very fun but demanding and stressful new job. in those five months (woof), working on this has been a delightful mental sidebar for me.
> 
> i can't begin to tell you how grateful i am for all the kudos and reviews so far. i spend a lot of time writing this, simply because i love the process OF writing, but it feels incredibly gratifying to know you're enjoying the result. I do my best to respond to reviews, so if i don't get to yours: thank YOU!
> 
> some notes:  
> 1) the word count for this chapter clocks in at a tidy ~13k; the original draft threatened to drag into more than 20k words (oof), so I split that draft into chapters 6 and 7 for more manageable reading. They're like, A-Side and B-Side now.  
> 2) content warnings: gozaburo makes an appearance and is terrible; some gory/bloody fantasy violence

TIME: 0244. Isis awoke in the warm darkness of her room. She had a dull, thudding migraine, the last desperate kicks of a bad dream, shoved alive into its tomb. She rolled over and lay on her side for a moment, pillow over her head, willing the dream to die. After several minutes, she got out of bed, simmering in surrender, and staggered into her small en suite bathroom. It was one of the better privileges she was afforded as Commander.

She hit the light switch, grimacing as the light blinded her. The lighting made her face look gaunt, with shallow dips and curves around her cheekbones, her mouth. Her white tank top hung off her shoulders. She pitched forward, bracing both hands on either side of the sink, leaning her forehead against the cool glass. It was a small relief.

Just a bad dream? Possible. The Drift was known to leave its scars, which rose and vanished in the subconscious like wakes on the sea. 

Equally possible was another horror of the future, courtesy of the Millennium Tauk. Domino, smoking and broken, smashed to pieces by the unforgiving fist of the kaiju apocalypse. Or Lima. Or Los Angeles. It didn't matter. At last peace descends on the coasts, a silence disrupted only by the wind, carrying away the last of the smoke. No one is left to fight. 

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So they said, tritely. Now flip it on its head and do everything, anything you can, and get the same result anyway. That was fate, which brought its own kind of madness. Isis was not prone to panic, and she never thought of herself as fretful, but most days, it felt like all she did was stumble through the dark, towards a dreadful light at the end of a dreadful tunnel. Some stronger, more ancient magic was choking the power of the Millennium Tauk, like a hand around her throat, every breath of magic a short, desperate gasp. It was not enough. Never enough. Whose hand was it?

She released a harsh growl of frustration and thumped the edge of the sink with her fist. She opened her medicine cabinet, found the ibuprofen, and swallowed it down. The migraine kicked hard in protest. It would be a long time before she fell back asleep.

Her tablet was not where it was supposed to be, charging on her nightstand. It was probably in C Lab. Isis put on the Tauk, a dark green sweatshirt, and sweatpants, too apathetic to change into something more appropriate to her position. She wandered through the Shatterdome down to C Lab, yawning. It was an hour unfit for ceremony or formalities. Who was she going to run into, anyway?

Seto.

Sitting at a work table in the dark lab, illuminated by a single drafting lamp. Something gold and gleaming lay scattered in pieces across the table.

At the sight of her, he visibly stiffened, shoulders tensing. She wished he wouldn’t. They were on the same damn side.

“You’re supposed to be in your room,” she said, padding past the empty work tables. He greeted her with a scowl. “What are you – ”

He had the Millennium Puzzle. Even broken into pieces, each one carefully labeled with a white sticker and a notation of his own invention, she recognized it immediately.

“ – doing?” she finished softly. She shouldn’t be surprised. She always knew he’d meet Yuugi Mutou at some point; she’d sensed, even before his solo Drift plan backfired, that they were going to fall into each other’s orbit, drawn together by forces more powerful than they understood. Not just because they were both from Domino, or because their love for games ran deeper than just simple passion, but because destiny also, sometimes, came in pieces, and had to be put together. She'd sent Seto to Anchorage on purpose.

But still: to see the Millennium Puzzle, glinting between Seto’s fingers, gave Isis a subtle thrill. She knew who was in there – who Yuugi had awakened – but, like his name, the Puzzle's power was a mystery.

The stele said only that the Pharaoh had defeated the kaiju before. It did not say how.

Seto was still considering her with a stony glare, the piece in one hand, a polishing cloth in the other. Isis smiled.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell on you. But you owe me one.”

Seto accepted her deal with a short sigh.

“I wasted most of the day. Sleep, engineering, the kitchen, and right back to sleep," he said, “and this thing needs attention, so I can give it back to Yuugi. But I just… I don’t – ”

He made a scathing noise, tossing both piece and cloth onto the table with a clatter. His face was tight with frustration.

Isis dragged a rolling chair over from a nearby work table and dropped into it, leaning back, draping her arms along the arm rests. 

“What have you learned so far?”  

He slid a notebook down the table towards her. She picked it up and skimmed his notes, written out in tight, dense script. Both optical emission spectroscopy and x-ray fluorescence had declared the Puzzle electrum, rather than pure gold, and every property fell in line accordingly: density, optical constants, crystallography, and so on. His only editorial was an irritated _'what the fuck'_ scribbled in the margin.

On the next few pages, he’d drawn the Millennium Puzzle as he disassembled it, stage by stage, clean and architectural. It was a curiously analog method – no 3D modeling? no puzzle-solving algorithms? – until she remembered Pegasus was confiscating his laptop every night.

Wordlessly, Isis set the notebook back on the table, only too aware of the sharp, thoughtful frown he'd fixed on her. Clearly he'd already noticed the Millennium Tauk. Isis returned his gaze with neutral calm, well-prepared for the inevitable interrogation.

“I can’t help but wonder,” he said, with a slight edge, “if I ran the same tests on Pegasus’ eye, would I get the same results? Or your necklace?”

“You would,” Isis said evenly. He blinked, his brows knitting together.

“What do you know?” he growled, and she smiled. Doing the exact same thing, and getting the exact same results… _that_ drove him insane? Foolish. Did he really want these answers?

“They’re called the Millennium Items. They were all cast at the same time, about three thousand years ago, towards the end of the New Kingdom period of ancient Egypt,” she said. “They’re a set of seven mythical tools that protected the land from evil. Each one has a unique power.”

“There's _four_ of them in this Shatterdome,” he said, fanning out four fingers. Surprise flashed through Isis. _Four?_ She knew where all of them were, except one... So even the Ring had found its way here? Of course it did. That was how the Ring worked. It likely would find her, soon enough. Seto didn’t let her linger on the thought. “The eye, your necklace, this puzzle, Bakura’s pendant. Are we so desperate that we're rubbing magic lamps now?"

"No stone unturned," she said, after a moment, making a private note to look into Ryou Bakura.

Seto turned his chair to fully face her, crossing his arms, wearing his usual scowl of suspicion like it was carved into his face.

“Okay. I’ll bite. What does yours do?”

Nothing useful. The same hammer hitting the same nail, over and over again. For weeks, the Millennium Tauk had shown her Mokuba standing on the shore of death, the eternal tide rising around his feet, closer than usual. Seeing him in the hospital bed, injured but alive, had broken the fearsome heat of her visions like a summer storm.

She hadn’t warned them. To what end? Seto saw perfectly terrible futures all on his own. He wouldn't have listened. What if she had warned them, and provoked a worse future? And what about free will? A thousand different rationalizations, each one choked down like a bitter pill.

Her power offered better gifts, sometimes; small balms for the unforgiving bruises of fate. Isis held out her hand, palm up.

“Give me your hand,” she said.

After a long pause, Seto unfolded his arm and took her hand.

“Now think of a memory… maybe one that isn’t so clear, one you’d like to remember again. Something pleasant.”

Seto closed his eyes, slowly relaxing into the exercise. For a few, silent seconds, they sat in the lab, a thin bubble of light floating in a sea of darkness. Below her sweatshirt, the Millennium Tauk began to warm up, with a faint, electric sizzle of magic…

The memory bloomed out of blackness, as vibrant as a flower.

 _...the sun bright-hot on his wet, bare skin, the waves rolling and breaking around his calves. a woman, her face shadowed by the brim of her straw hat, holding his hand. toes vanishing into the sand. a gulp of fear, clinging to her, as a wave knocked into his legs. a vast ocean before him, unforgiving and indifferent. don’t worry, she said, don’t worry, i’m right here. see? it’s fine. in we go. swept up in her arms, high over the water, as she strode, bold and confident, into the dark green sea_ and a wash of yearning, an ache of grief like she’d been kicked in the chest. An image he clutched like a talisman. Recalling not softness, but strength.

Isis let go of Seto’s hand and he crossed his arms again, tight against his chest. Slumped back in his chair, surrounded by the empty lab, he looked hopelessly young. Hair in his eyes, like always. His favorite black hoodie. A curve in his lips just petulant enough to undermine the unrelenting intensity of his gaze. An adult, welded together in pieces and posture around a child. His shoulders were slightly drawn up, his gaze fixed on her, like he expected her to say something, or take something, tear down the shimmering, breeze-filled veil of his memory.

“I also miss my mother,” she said.

His gaze swung back to the pieces of the Puzzle, carefully studied.

“Who doesn’t," he muttered.

Isis wanted to ask her name, what she was like. What did she leave behind? Her laugh? Her intelligence? Her love of reading? Would she be proud of you, the things you’ve done, the secrets you keep? But she said nothing, knowing he was casting about for a safer mooring, lest he get swept up in visions of the past all over again. Distractions.

He put two pieces together, added a third, peeled the labels off, and flicked those mindlessly into a wastebasket. He turned the cluster over between his fingers, light shifting along its gold planes, and slotted several more pieces in with small clicks. Precise and methodical. Eventually his attention drifted towards her neck, tracing the curve of the necklace.

“What about Pegasus’ eye?” he said, eyes cutting up to meet hers.

“The same, but for how someone's feeling,” Isis said. A half-truth, barely. _That_ was not something he should ever know.

Still, for a moment, a silent horror dawned slowly across his face, his gaze flying out a thousand miles. His shoulders rose as he inhaled, no doubt plunging through every emotion he'd felt in the past three years.

Then his expression darkened, snapping shut like a bear trap. He shoved another piece of the Millennium Puzzle into place.

“Or, he's just perceptive, and you just made a lucky stab in the dark," he growled. "And magic isn't real, and the whims of myth mean nothing next to empirical evidence."

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’"

“The rest should've been silence much sooner," he said. Isis raised an eyebrow. 

"Okay. How about, 'all I know is that I know nothing,'" she said.

"Behold. A moron," he said.

"Come on, Seto. You’re a scientist. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'"

He thumbed a piece into place. “Tch. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.’”

It took her only a second to place it. She'd watched that movie years ago, curled up on the couch with Malik and Rishid at home in Los Angeles, the family room awash in red light from the television screen. 

" _Sure,_ " she said, deepening her voice in teasing. "'Stop, Dave, I'm afraid. My mind is going, I can feel it - '"

"Fuck off," he snapped. Isis stiffened.

They glowered at each other, their faces coloring with mutual anger; then Seto threw the pieces of the Puzzle down with a clatter, slammed his elbows on the work table, and dragged his hands down his face. He forcefully exhaled, into his hands. Their little game was over.

"My apologies, Commander Ishtar," he said, his sincerity punctured by frustration. 

Isis looked away, biting her lip to give her own anger somewhere to go, all of it tangled with remorse. She didn't want to apologize for answering his question, just because he didn’t like the fucking answer. But he was also not a gun, to be aimed and fired at the problem. The human mind was, at turns, deeply powerful and intensely fragile, an engine made of glass. If she wasn’t careful, he’d reject it all, out of spite and stubbornness. 

“Same to you. I didn’t mean… to...” 

In his eyes, a little flickering of resentment, as if to say, _move on already_.

“Okay. Draw your own conclusions,” she said. “But you’re not sitting here, breaking curfew and risking Pegasus slapping the cuffs on, because you think this Puzzle is _just_ a puzzle."

For a long time, he said nothing. 

Eventually he picked up the Puzzle again, casting about for another piece and adding it to the growing golden cluster.

“Well?”

“I’m drawing my own conclusions,” he said testily. Isis resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. Jealous with his ideas, as usual. But she herself had left a great, gaping hole in the truth, and his face was different, she noticed, as his hand floated over the array of pieces. No longer so restless and sullen, as in past months, but alive and keen, with a focused hunger. 

Good. As long as _something_ drove him forward...

She leaned sideways, propping her elbow on the desk. Slowly, the Puzzle came together, taking shape in Seto’s hands. Already, she felt the ancient heart inside it, beating back to life. If Seto didn't know how to feel it, he would soon.

“Yuugi said if I make a wish and solve the Puzzle, it’ll come true,” he said. He was almost done.

“And all that noise you just made?” she said.

“Doesn't mean I _believe_ him."

"But you have a wish anyway.”

The second-to-last piece found its way home.

“A monte cristo," Seto said.

"Your wish is a _sandwich?_ ”

“Yes. A decent monte cristo is the one fucking thing I can’t get here,” Seto said defiantly. "With crunchy, well-fried bread, so it doesn't fall apart, and real cheese, not the pathetic excuse for cheddar we have here. The preserves have to be fresh, so it has a nice, tart kick. And mustard. The good kind, from a glass jar. None of this shit squeezed out of a plastic bottle.”

Isis couldn’t repress the smile spreading across her face. Seto and Malik were very different people: Malik revelled in his own lust for the world, the paths it laid out before him, the places and people they led him to. For Seto, the simple act of wanting was a distraction at best, and a curse, a punishment, at worst. She wondered what Malik would think of Seto's ambition here.

“Sounds complicated,” she said.

“That’s why it’s a wish,” he said, picking up the final piece of the Puzzle. Isis tensed. "Abracadabra.”

With a blithe lack of ceremony, he solved the Puzzle.

Nothing happened.

Seto smirked, tight and taunting.

"Fascinating," he said. "No sandwich."

"Oh, ye of little faith," Isis said, with a wide, face-stretching yawn. She was going to have one hell of a day if she stayed here much longer. He looked at her sideways, thoughtful. He stood up, cradled the Puzzle in one arm, its long cord dangling from his wrist, and gathered his notes.

They left C Lab and stole through the sleeping Shatterdome back to the dorms, reaching his suite first. She leaned one shoulder against the wall, yawning as he tapped a code into the lock on Mokuba’s door. Of course: Mokuba’s access code wasn’t getting flagged.

"Commander," he said, with a formal nod. Then he paused, halfway through the door, as though struck by a thought. He looked at her over his shoulder. "Thanks."

"For what?" she said, coming off the wall. "You never broke curfew. And magic isn't real. None of this ever happened. Good night, Ranger."

He gave her another smile, small, as stubborn as ever, and slipped inside.

In her own room, she fell back into bed, face up, avoiding the Tauk’s unblinking eye. Her migraine had stopped kicking so hard. In the morning, this small interlude would be only half-remembered, embroidered with gold. It had been all just dreams, tonight. She realized that now. And if Seto _really_ solved the Puzzle... 

She drifted off, dreamless. A mercy.

* * *

Seto locked the door, took off his shoes, and slipped into his own room. There, he leaned against the wall, Puzzle in hand, his head swimming. If he closed his eyes, he could still feel Isis’ hand clasping his, firm, _real_ , anchoring him through the dizzying upheaval of memory. _Draw your own conclusions,_ she said. What was he supposed to take from this delirious surge of grief? 

As for Pegasus’ Eye: his stomach churned. If Pegasus knew what he was feeling – really _knew_ , if he could pick Seto apart like a fisherman with a catch, a few quick cuts to reveal everything – then that perpetual, nagging itch of paranoia was entirely justified. It all tracked. An entire realm beyond his understanding; a concept he’d written off as childish fantasy...

Strangest of all, however, was not memory or feeling, but the young man standing in the room, facing him, practically glowing in the dark. Yami had the same lean, sinewy frame as Yuugi, the same wild hair. How did that work? An echo of their bond? Or something else?

And all the subtle threat of a sword in its sheath. They stared at each other, silent.

Seto edged past Yami, placing the Puzzle on his nightstand, and turned on the reading light. It washed through the windowless room, low and warm.

“Satisfied?” Yami said. His presence pulled on Seto’s consciousness, an almost imperceptible tilt; their own private gravity, locking them in orbit around each other. It lacked the surging freeflow of Drift, which given the sense of restraint flaring through the space between them, Seto understood as a choice, a line left uncrossed for both of their sakes.

Maybe even a concession to nerves. It didn't need to get weirder.

“Hardly,” Seto said, with resolute calm. He’d beaten Yami once before. He'd do it again.

He took a step forward. Yami didn’t move. Seto took another, forcing him backwards, and again, until Yami’s back hit the wall without a sound, his chin lifting as he met Seto’s gaze. Seto lifted his hand and batted two fingertips at a skewed lock of blonde hair. It wavered, flickering like a candle flame, and resumed its original shape. 

Yami didn’t blink.

“Your place, or mine?” he said slyly.

Seto chuffed. “Yours.”

In a whirl of color, streaked with black, Seto’s bedroom fell away around them, revealing the torch-lit stone labyrinth from Drift. They were against a stone wall now, between two torches. Seto gave the same lock of hair a brisk tug – thick and slightly coarse, undyed – plucking out several strands.

" _Ow_ ," Yami said, a smile curving across his face. He put both hands against Seto’s chest and pushed, hard, sending him several steps back. Point made.

“So you can do this at will,” Seto said, casting an eye around the labyrinth. It was the vaulted room from before, still as vast and echoing, with the same unnerving sense of an ancient, hidden presence. Like the roots of a tree, spreading deep underground. The doors had changed. His was nowhere in sight.

He turned back to Yami. “What is this place? Who designed it? If this is the inside, is there an outside? Is the Puzzle the only way to get in here? How does it work?”

Yami paused, brows furrowing.

"...Time has shrouded those answers in mystery," he said, finally.

Seto frowned, unimpressed. Did Yuugi not think to ask any of those questions, the first time he found himself here? They both just _lived_ with this?

“Do you have any wits at all? Rhetorical question,” he said, as Yami started to reply. “I have more questions. Take us back. Do you have to do that, or can I?”

“You can,” Yami said begrudgingly. “But it takes some focus. Think about where we were... your room, and where you were standing. Your body will call both of us back.”

The body as an anchor: _that_ was information. Seto closed his eyes, imagining his small bedroom, with the undecorated concrete walls, the desk in the corner, his neatly-made bed where he’d dozed fitfully atop the comforter all day long. They’d been standing by the wall next to the door into Mokuba’s room. His neck was sore, his hands still chapped from his kitchen shift. How much detail did he need to imagine? Another question Yami probably couldn’t answer.

The stone labyrinth disappeared, another falling away. They were back in the bedroom. Surprisingly smooth.

“Have a seat,” Seto said, sitting on the side of the bed. Yami settled himself on the desk, one slender leg crossed over the other, leaning back with his hands planted flat on the surface, Seto's mug of pens by his hip. Cool and at ease, like a cat atop a garden wall.

Even so, Seto kept the Puzzle close at hand. If this exchange threatened to go south, into that black void, all he had to do was break it. A fantastically useful design. A built-in kill switch.

“Who is my real drift partner? You, or Yuugi?” he said.

“Both,” Yami said. 

“Could I drift with him, without you?”

“You could,” Yami said, with a light swing of his foot, kicking the thought away. “But you won’t. We’re a team.”

“I see. You must be very close,” Seto said.

“We are,” Yami said affectionately.

“And this… arrangement. You do everything together.”

“Yes, everything,” Yami said.

“So when he got mad about that stunt you pulled in Drift, that was all an act? He was in on that too?” Seto said. To his cold delight, Yami jerked upright, scowling.

“ _No,_ ” he said. “That was all me. He had nothing to do with it. All he wanted to do was show you the inside of the Puzzle. _I’m_ the one who took it too far. I – ”

He stopped, rolling his eyes around the room, a resentful, almost disbelieving expression crossing his face. Seto decided not to say anything, fascinated by the way Yami’s chest rose as he inhaled, soft and long, as though he had a real form, lungs to fill with air and a ribcage to carry them. He corrected himself: Yami _did_ have a real form. It was just not a form he understood yet.

“I should apologize,” Yami said, in a low voice. “I almost wrecked our drift compatibility. I could have split this team apart before we ever even stepped foot in a Jaeger.”

Seto looked at him sideways, struck by a small but pointed surprise. Apologies seemed a foreign tongue for this baffling person, who had only two days ago dragged him into an incomprehensible void, appeared cloaked in restless fire, and made him riddle his way out. 

More things in heaven and earth… to say nothing of what crawled out of hell. So fucking what. Seto’s philosophy was full of those dreams already. He’d made a promise. He was going to keep it. 

“Don’t be so arrogant,” he said. “You can’t scare me away just by turning out the lights and making me play some truth or dare.”

“Still,” Yami insisted, bordering on mechanical. “I should apologize. Pegasus said I need to make this work. I told you the fight was out there, and then _I_ picked a fight with _you –_ ”

“Oh, fine,” Seto drawled, lofty. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fixing his gaze on Yami. “Since you insist on putting on this pointless morality play. Let’s hear your apology.”

With the floor abruptly conceded, Yami's mouth snapped shut. The silence yawned around them. Seto laced his fingers, tapping his thumbs together, imitating patience. So Pegasus had seen fit to give Yami direction. He’d made Seto go in blindfolded, and now he was scrambling to make sure he didn’t trip. Seto tested the thought and discovered only an uneasy ambivalence.

Yami drew himself up. From his seat atop the desk, he was sitting higher than Seto, as regal as a stone lion outside an ancient temple. Stiff and imperious, teeth bared some unknown enemy.

“As you were saying, you should apologize,” Seto said. “But _–_ ”

"But I wanted you to _know_ ," Yami said, with a growl, his crimson eyes gleaming _–_ and caught himself, again. Despite the low, golden light beckoning him to sleep, Seto was wide awake.

“Know what?” he said.

Yuugi’s eyes were not crimson. They were violet.

“Go on. Don’t be shy,” Seto said, with a flicker of anticipation. Yami’s posture lost its statuesque rigidity as he pitched forward, fire flashing in his expression.

 "Dartz said you put your own brother in the hospital,” he snarled. “Joey said you're a troublemaker, and he thinks you _did_ something. Yuugi doesn't care about any of that, but _I_ care about _Yuugi_ . There is _nothing_ I won't do for him – ”

 Without a trace of the desperation that usually compelled that kind of promise.  

" – and now _you_ show up, and I wanted you to know I'm _here_. I'm not just an odd little secret. I'm not just some shadow in a trinket, and I'll smash you to pieces before I let you put Yuugi in danger. What happened? What do I need to protect us from? What the hell are _you_ made of?!”

In the wake of this question – hackles raised, every word drenched in vengeance – a ringing silence filled the room. Seto inhaled, a hot vibrating energy coursing through him, a firm kick of adrenaline, knocking out a breathless hole in his chest. He’d never had much patience for the stale, lurching tit-for-tat of getting to know someone; he wouldn’t have gone through even a minute of the rigmarole with Yuugi if it weren’t for… Yuugi.

This, however… he almost wanted to laugh. Understanding sank its teeth into him with painful ease. 

“But I overstepped,” Yami said, in determined tones. “And I apologize. I mean it. I acted against you in bad faith, and I won’t do it again."

He exhaled, tight and soft, his eyes drifting towards the Puzzle on the nightstand. 

"You have to understand," he said. "This game we’re playing, with all these strange machines, and these beasts... Something about it drives me mad."

As he spoke, he glanced back at Seto, a challenging look, as though daring him to say the same thing wasn’t lurking in the dark spaces, the shadows between his thoughts. 

Seto only smiled. That would be a lie. It had been there for years now.

"For a moment, I wasn’t even sure if you were human,” he said. "But I think you and I are made of the same material."

“Are we?” Yami said incredulously, eyeing Seto with the same look he’d given him in the void of Drift, untangling the logic thread by thread. _I lose the game._ “So did you? ... _Do_ something?”

The smile slipped off Seto’s mouth, the same old shame rising to simmer under his skin. 

Yes, he did. He’d done his best and fought and _won_. He got what he fucking wanted. And every night since then, he’d heard the result screaming in his dreams, claws closing around them with a merciless crunch of metal. Brilliant, talented, and stubborn, all of it multiplied by zero: a fool.

He clenched his teeth, offering up the only prayers he ever cared to make. A curse on Pegasus. Another for Dartz. And the third.

“So what if I did?” he said.

“Whatever it was, Yuugi will understand. That’s the type of person he is,” Yami said.

“And you?”

“Well. You’re clearly doing your best to understand us. Understand _me_ ,” Yami said, smiling tightly. “It’s only fair we do the same for you.”

Seto released a slow sigh. That was only half of what was fair. Yuugi had made almost no attempts to hide his weird bullshit. He’d even let Seto take it from him and pick it apart. Now Yami was perched on Seto’s desk, answering all his questions, giving him firm, if testy, apologies. Full disclosure.

If he wanted this team to work...

“Okay," he said, forcing the words to take shape in his mouth, weighing each one. "I’ll talk to Yuugi."

Yami’s expression sharpened with satisfaction. But before he could say anything, Seto cut him off. 

“I’d like to go to sleep. But without you...” He circled the air by his head with one finger. “Hovering. Where do you go when I dismantle the Puzzle?”

“Nowhere,” Yami said.

“You’re here whether I take it apart or not?”

“No, I mean _nowhere_. What you called the abyss,” Yami said dryly. “That’s where I was until Yuugi put me together.”

"You said there was a way out."

"Only when the Puzzle is complete, with someone to wield it," Yami said. Odd choice of words, Seto thought; wielding is for weapons. "Right now, my way out is through you."

Ah. If Isis was telling the truth about how old the Millennium Items were, then Yami had spent thousands of years in oblivion. Seto had spent only minutes in that endless void, his sense of self dissolving into ether, every memory drifting away like ash. Being, barely.  

And in all that time, all Yami could do was wait? For someone, anyone, to put the Puzzle together? 

A slow horror sank through Seto.

He studied Yami, carefully, a dozen different philosophies and laws of physics spooling through his head. The mind commands the body, and it obeys. A body at rest will stay at rest until acted upon by an outside force. Yami had no… conventional body of his own. The mind commands itself, and resists.

No wonder he’d do anything for Yuugi.

“Okay,” Seto said, standing up, taking his hoodie off and throwing it over the back of his desk chair. "You’re going back into that labyrinth, and you're going to _stay there_ until morning. If I wake up and my head’s on backwards, I’ll melt you into fucking scrap. And that thing you do with Yuugi, where you…"

He cast about for words.

"...take over?" Yami offered.

"Under _no_ circumstances. Not once, not ever. You copy?"

"I copy," Yami said, "...although I was hoping to find out what it's like to be tall."

"Best decision I ever made," Seto muttered. He grabbed his shirt by the back of the collar and pulled it over his head, hair falling over his eyes. He bundled up the shirt and threw it into the laundry hamper in his closet, all the while feeling the curious, feather-light touch of Yami’s gaze on the bare skin of his back. Seto turned around, spreading his hands in silent question.

“What else did you do today?” Yami said. Seto blanked.

“What did I – what? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Yuugi and I usually talk until he falls asleep."

“This isn’t some seventh-grade sleepover,” Seto snapped. Yami rolled his eyes sideways again, mouth bunched in a small pout. Disappointment? Seto didn’t care.

“Good night. See you in the morning,” Yami said, and disappeared, a simple flickering out.

And, just like that, Seto was alone again.

He ran both hands back through his hair, thinking about nothing and everything. Feeling incredibly stupid, but unable to stop himself, he picked up the Puzzle from his nightstand and held it up to his ear, listening. Like a seashell, it returned only the distant rhythm of his heart, slow and steady.

He set it back down. After changing into sweatpants, he crawled into bed and rolled onto his side, frowning at the Puzzle. 

Like their very own Drift. All his energy was spent, every emotion flattened under the weight of the day. So what if Yami knew how tired he was? If he saw his dreams?

No. A vicious possessiveness braced itself within him, a tension like a scorpion, pulling its tail back. They could have some. Not all.

He reached out and turned the Puzzle around, with a light thunk, so that the Eye looked straight down into the nightstand. 

“Enjoy the view,” he muttered, and hit the light.  

* * *

The first few days back in Domino were a blur of distractions: orientations and introductions and tours and other procedural tasks that kept Yuugi well-occupied, his freshly-stamped dog tags jangling next to Kaiba’s locket. MUTOU, YUUGI: RANGER | DOMINO / JP SHATTERDOME. A new kind of weight hanging from his neck.  

The nights, however, ached. Maybe it was the time difference with Alaska, every misplaced hour fading from his body like a bruise; maybe it was nerves, maybe it was impatience. Maybe all three at once. Three years waiting in Anchorage, until, finally, at last… 

Kaiba glanced at him as he walked into the mess hall for dinner and promptly vanished, like a cat into the midnight shadows of an alleyway. Yuugi blinked, and he was gone. 

And, in the space where Yami was supposed to be, the darkness started spilling in, a restless, churning flow of thoughts that flung him out of sleep. He lay on his bed in his new room, several doors down the hall from the room he knew was Kaiba’s, where Yami was, listening to nothing but the silence, echoing. _No one here but you._ Doing nothing. Needed by no one. Welcome home. He missed Joey and Honda so much it hurt. 

JOEY  
 _i miss u too good buddy... Its so quiet around here. Honda’s my only dance partner now and his hips aren't meant for lindy hop  
_ _9:16 PM_

 _you besties with kaiba yet?  
_ _9:16 PM_

YUUGI  
 _yeah we had lunch the other day. we talked for hours  
_ _9:17 PM_

 _hes really nice once you get to know him. Actually pretty shy. kind of a goof  
_ _9:17 PM_

JOEY  
 _WAT. NO  
_ _9:18 PM_

YUUGI  
 _YES. he gave me a friendship bracelet and everything  
_ _9:18 PM_

JOEY  
 _You are a sick man. I hope a kaiju pops you like a grape  
_ _9:19 PM_

A light knock on his half-open door made Yuugi look up from his phone. 

“Hey,” Anzu said brightly. Her presence alone lifted some of the weight off his chest. “Did you eat? The mess hall’s closing soon.” 

“No, I totally forgot,” Yuugi said, just as his stomach growled in protest. He rolled off the bed. Usually Yami, so keen on exploring the arts of taste and touch, reminded him to eat. “Let’s go.” 

They walked down to the mess hall together. It was a limp evening. Everyone they passed seemed wrung out, grey-faced. Repair work on White Dragon started early and stopped late. In the mess hall, a smattering of people were still finishing the last of their dinner. 

"...and I even got to swing by my old dance studio," Anzu said, slinging a ladleful of chili into a bowl as they moved through the line. "Everyone lost their minds. I felt like a celebrity."

"You're so lucky you got to go into Domino and see your parents," Yuugi said, picking over what remained of the chopped fruit. "My mom doesn't know when she can take time off, Jiichan’s not feeling great, and, you know, my dad’s like, 'congrats' and he's done for the year."

"Why don't you request some leave? I bet Isis would say yes."

"Yeah, I'm thinking about it – "

He stopped. They'd reached the end of the line and turned around. A cluster of J-techs had left, leaving a long table open, and at the end, bent over his laptop with his hand over his mouth, deep in thought, was Kaiba. 

Anzu leaned over, conspiratorial. "What do you think? Should we go over there?"

Yuugi chewed his tongue, thinking, a little sour. 

"I wouldn't," said a voice behind them, an engineer with glossy black hair and a die earring. "You know who that is, right?"

Like a hammer to a nail, a sudden sharp strike of commitment. Yuugi swallowed his frown, composing a smile. The engineer's white-haired companion was giving him an odd look. "Yeah, he's my drift partner. Excuse me." 

Without waiting for a response, he went and sat down at the table, next to Kaiba. He was wearing dark blue coveralls, with the sleeves cuffed neatly to his elbows, his forearms faintly clouded with machine grease; his face was similarly scuffed. The Puzzle was nowhere in sight – Yuugi felt it anyway, a throb in the air, a distant drumbeat. So Kaiba had solved it. Where did he have it? Yuugi resisted the temptation to look under the table.

Kaiba glanced at him, suspicious. His roast chicken breast with vegetables was mostly untouched. 

“Hey, do you have a few minutes?” Yuugi said, as Anzu sat down across from them. “I had a question about something, but I think you're the only one who can answer it. No one else has any idea.”

With a blink, Kaiba’s features shifted into a skeptical frown. Yuugi only smiled, casually churning his chili with a spoon.

“Ask it,” Kaiba said.

“How was your day?”

“Seriously?” Kaiba said, eyebrows twitching upwards with disdain. Yuugi said nothing, taking a bite of his food. Kaiba snorted, a crunchy, exasperated sound. He looked at Anzu, who leaned forward, elbow on the table, pointedly snapping a baby carrot between her teeth, and his expression narrowed. For a moment, Yuugi thought he might refuse this overture; maybe it was better to let a tired, busy Kaiba lie... but then Kaiba delicately closed his laptop and folded his arms on the table, angling himself towards Yuugi.

“It was… ” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Frustrating.” 

“Something wrong with Jaeger repairs?” Yuugi said. 

“No, I keep a firm grip on that,” Kaiba said, somehow both dismissive and offended. “But your... _partner_ is annoying. I spent two hours explaining the engine to him. This is a ventilator. That’s a linear solenoidal coil. This is what happens to plasma in a field-reversed configuration. No, I’m not going to switch on a damaged tokamak just to ‘see what happens'. I know what happens! We all fry like eggs! _How_ on _earth_ – ”

His voice had risen to the reckless, headlong tenor of a rant. He stopped himself, hands spread, almost beseeching. With a hot huff, he lay them on the table, curling them into loose fists.

“Sorry,” Yuugi said, biting back a laugh. “I, uh, totally forgot to bring him up to speed on nuclear physics.”

“It’s not that. I have no problem explaining it,” Kaiba said irritably. “Just... having someone hanging around all day, yammering on and on, it’s...”

He trailed off, throwing the thought to the wind with a peevish toss of his hand, as Yuugi grinned. It was hard to think of Yami as someone who _yammered_. Inquisitive, yes, maybe even nosy; but a chatterbox, never.

“...making friends?” Anzu offered, grinning. 

“We’re definitely making _something_ ,” Kaiba muttered, and paused, with an attentive tilt of his head. Listening. “He... he says to tell you not to worry about him. That so far, I’ve been a real Prince Char – asshole. I’m not saying that.”

Yuugi laughed out loud; Yami was obviously having a laugh of his own. So they were getting along, after a fashion. 

At the same time, a savage little jealousy kicked through him. 

He forced the thought aside. 

"I still have your locket, safe and sound,” he said, pulling the locket out of his sweater. Kaiba’s hand twitched, an aborted gesture of want. “Whenever you’re ready to swap.”

“...Right. I – shut _up_ ,” Kaiba said, his head snapping forward. “I’m not telling him _now_.”

Both Anzu and Yuugi froze, Anzu with her spoon halfway to her mouth, Yuugi with the locket still dangling from his fingers. A brief, breathless pause: Kaiba was frowning at… nothing. Yuugi traced his line of sight to the empty seat next to Anzu, the hair on the back of his neck rising with a thrill of recognition. They were alone at the end of the table, the next closest person some several yards away, and yet...

“Kaiba,” Anzu said, firmly. Kaiba didn’t seem to hear her.

“ _I’ll_ decide when to fucking tell him,” he growled, to thin air. “ _You_ are a glorified stowaway – ”

Yuugi shot his hand out, grabbing Kaiba by his forearm – like snapping a mousetrap. Kaiba jolted hard in his seat, jerking his wrist out of Yuugi's grip. Yuugi caught his upper arm, softer, less aggressive.

“You’re talking to him out loud,” he said, in a low voice. “Keep it in here.” He tapped his temple with two fingers. 

Kaiba's eyes widened. This close, only a foot apart, the air between them was full of the cedar scent of Kaiba’s deodorant, mingled with the dry, nose-battering smells of machine grease and oil.

“He’s right there, isn’t he?” Yuugi said, nodding across the table. 

Kaiba seized him with a look, a drowning man seizing a piece of driftwood. Like if he looked at anything or anyone other than Yuugi, the truth would drag him under, into the resplendent depths of insanity: talking to someone no one else could see or hear. A familiar feeling.

“Tell me what?” Yuugi said calmly. “You can tell me now, if you want.”

A gleam of panic flickered in Kaiba’s eyes and disappeared.

“Mind your own business,” he snarled, his voice so sharp and cold with steel it plunged into Yuugi’s chest, several inches deep. With his hand still on Kaiba’s arm, he sensed him caught in the grip of a tremendous, lurking fear.

“Kaiba, calm down,” Anzu said. “Why don’t we – ”

Yuugi let go. 

Without another word, Kaiba rose from his seat, yanking up his laptop and shoving it into a messenger bag. After only a moment’s thought, he shoved his untouched meal in their direction, a firm order not to waste the food, and left, striding between the long tables, people hastily scattering out of his way.

“What the fuck was _that?_ ” Anzu said. 

Yuugi tore his gaze away from Kaiba’s retreat, sighing through his nose. Every feeling from the past few days was flooding through him all over again, all at once, upending all the stillness he’d tried to force on himself in vain. The one thing he was here to do – the one person he needed to get along with – could barely stand to speak to him. 

"What the hell am I doing here," he muttered, stabbing his fork through a roasted potato.

“Hey,” Anzu said sternly. He begrudgingly met her eyes. “Whatever’s bothering him, he has to figure it out eventually. He can’t do this without you.”

She was right. He knew she was right. She spoke with the conviction of a true believer, with a faith so strong it scorned a need for proof. But he was finding it hard to believe. 

“I know,” he said, his hand rising aimlessly to the empty hole in his chest. “I just…”

No, not empty. His fingers glanced the cool, sharp edges of Kaiba’s locket. 

He opened it. Mokuba beamed up at him. The locket was smaller, far less intricate than the Puzzle, but no lighter for it. 

"You're way overdue for _that_ visit," Anzu said. "I bet he has something to say about this."

"I bet you're right," he said, tucking the locket back into his sweater. 

"When am I not," she said, and cracked another carrot in half.

* * *

 

With his gift in hand – a beautifully-polished mancala board, delivered speedily by courier from the Kame Game Shop – Yuugi knocked on the door to Room 12 in the medical wing. 

"Come in," replied a voice, muffled. He walked in to find a tall young man standing by the hospital bed, face hidden by the white sweatshirt he was struggling to pull over his head, one-handed.

"Oh – want some help?" Yuugi said, rushing forward.

"No. I got it," the young man said, so firm that Yuugi jerked to a halt. 

With a swift tug, Mokuba emerged from the fabric and threw the hood back, revealing thick black hair and a face that had all of Kaiba’s expressive features – only with rounded edges, and none of his stormy demeanor. His grey-blue eyes flashed over Yuugi, from head to toe and back, and he smiled, easy and liquid. The effect was that Mokuba looked just like his brother, and nothing like him at all. 

“You must be Yuugi Mutou,” Mokuba said, adjusting the right sleeve of his sweater. He’d cut most of the sleeve off, cuffing what hem remained with nimble tucks of his fingers. Where his right elbow should have been was a round socket made of blue-black metal, wrapped tightly in white bandages where the edge met the flesh of his bicep, clouded with bruises. “I was wondering when you’d come visit.”

“I'm sorry it took so long, I’m still settling in,” Yuugi said, holding out the mancala board. “This is for you.”

Mokuba set it on the tray table, tore off the wrapping paper, and unfolded the board, smiling at the sachet of colorful glass pebbles.

“Thank you,” he said. “This’ll be perfect for my new arm. I have to calibrate haptics and dexterity and all that stuff.”

“I’m glad,” Yuugi said. “Although I cheated a little, I know you love games. You know, my family owns a – ”

“The Kame Game Shop in Aomatani, yeah, I know,” Mokuba cut in. “Seto told me everything.”

“Uh, everything?” Yuugi blurted.

“That's what I said. Everything,” Mokuba said, still smiling. But there was a distinct frostiness to his eyes, untouched by the warmth of his smile. 

Just another Kaiba family resemblance? Yuugi's own smile froze in place, his stomach flipping over. Perched at the top of the bed’s headboard was a familiar stuffed moose, watching over them like a plush gargoyle, half hidden away but well within reach to anyone in bed. 

Or something else? Anzu was right about Kaiba – whatever the problem was, he had to figure it out – but Mokuba didn’t have to get over a single goddamn thing. 

Frustration briefly rippled through Yuugi. He was getting tired of having to machete his way through these snarled thickets of temperament, these undergrowths full of small, fleet-footed furies. 

“Oh, good. So you’re all up to speed,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Surprise sparked across Mokuba, swept away by a suspicious, iron-clad scowl. 

“If you don’t want to talk, we can play a card game or something,” Yuugi said, motioning to the rubber-banded deck of cards on the tray table, their edges soft and grey with age. “Or I can just go. Your choice.”

Mokuba glowered at him, silent. Then he gingerly pressed his hand to the side of his ribs, the strength of his displeasure starting to splinter under the pressure of a hidden pain. 

"You're gonna stand there until I make up my mind?" he said.

"I was gonna give you, like, ten more seconds and then leave, so that whatever's eating you can move on to dessert," Yuugi said, earning himself a dry snort from Mokuba.

“No, let’s talk,” he said. “I was about to take a walk anyway. Come on, I’m bored sick of this room.”

He moved stiffly towards the door. Yuugi opened it well ahead of him, letting him stagger out, and followed him into the pastel-hued hallway. 

“When do you get out?” Yuugi said, falling into step beside him. Mokuba headed towards the distant end of the hallway, where it opened into a spacious, sun-filled lounge with views of the Domino coastline. 

“Tomorrow, if this thing takes,” Mokuba said, lifting the black socket. 

“Des Gardius was... a little more than a week ago, right? Sounds like you’re healing up really well,” Yuugi said. Mokuba gave him a black look as they skirted the nurses’ station.

“I got lucky. Busted ribs, abdominal trauma... getting T-boned by a fucking kaiju should’ve killed me, honestly,” he said. “You haven’t gone into combat yet, right? Just a bunch of practice drops?”

“Yeah, just drops,” Yuugi said, hating the way Mokuba’s flat, knowing smile nicked something open inside him, a cut swollen with raw nerves. “But your brother’s the best of the best. Like, your Jaeger _broke_ , and he still pulled off a solo Drift – ”

Mokuba laughed at this, a dark, throaty chuckle. Abruptly Yuugi swallowed the rest of his thought. They’d just reached the peaceful lounge, and Mokuba trudged all the way to the windows. Dusky light lined the clouds, silver-orange-gold with baroque grandeur. Domino was starting to glitter, lights winking in the glassy field of skyscrapers. Three years, several thousand miles away, and now it was so close Yuugi could cut his thumb on the skyline's jagged edge. He rapidly found the crooked intersection of streets where he knew, to the west, he’d find the Game Shop just south of a city park.

Mokuba leaned his shoulder against the glass, catching his breath.

“Can you see your house from here?” Yuugi said.

“Yeah, it’s on that hill, in that neighborhood north of the park,” Mokuba said, tapping the glass, and Yuugi vaguely imagined a world where he and Kaiba went to the same school. 

“Do you miss it? I miss mine.”

“Not really," came the aloof reply.

With no good follow-up to that, at least nothing diplomatic, Yuugi was left just nodding slowly, tucking his lower lip between his teeth.

The sun sank lower behind the hills.

Yuugi settled in to wait.

Mokuba glanced at him, as though checking to see if he was still there, and Yuugi schooled his expression.

“Okay, look. I'm a little... upset," Mokuba said, approaching the word like a foreign language – halting, at an angle.

"I'm listening," Yuugi said.

"My brother lives with his back against the wall,” Mokuba said, hand to his ribs again. “And I really wish he didn’t. But people are always trying to grab him by the fucking neck, and no one thought he'd be able to Drift with anyone except me, and then he finds _you._ And I was like, ‘Thank God. Maybe this’ll work out, finally.' Then the _first_ thing you do is run him through some freak nightmare gauntlet. Why can't it be easy, for once? Why does it always have to be so fucking hard?!"

Yuugi had seen that look in his eyes before, not so level and cold as this, but aflame with ferocious intensity. Kaiba, slamming Honda and Joey to the floor in turn, seething with disappointment and frustration. Not who he wanted. Now Mokuba, lying in a hospital bed, waiting to see what kind of stranger his brother brought home to replace him. And the story Kaiba must’ve told him...

With a low grunt, Mokuba looked away, towards the window, where the sea was seeping ink-blue into the flat sheet of the sky. A line of silver flashed down his neck, disappearing into his collar. A matching locket. Hidden away. Always within reach.

And by the time he looked back at Yuugi, with a gaze that twisted the tenor of his expression, not pleading but demanding, Yuugi had realized he was not the problem. He was just another problem.

He'd made a half-formed plan to ask Mokuba what it was Kaiba needed to tell him. But that, he decided, could wait.

“I’m sorry,” Yuugi said. “I can't promise anything will be easy, as much as I want it to be, for both of us. All I want is to be honest with him about… the things I carry with me. What they mean to me. And I hope he'll be honest with me, too."

Mokuba studied him, in unflinching silence. Yuugi had the distinct impression he was taking the measure of every word.

"Did you really yell at Dartz?"

Yuugi blushed. "Not _yell_ , but I… did… snap at him, yes." 

"I'll take it," Mokuba said, after a few seconds, and Yuugi found himself releasing a sigh of relief. He'd passed some kind of  test. 

Mokuba pushed off the window, turning to head back down the hallway, abruptly gripping Yuugi’s shoulder to steady himself, just as fast releasing him.

"Is Niisama giving you a hard time?" he said, as they walked.

“Um, he's not giving me _any_ time," Yuugi said, half-laughing. "I told him I'd give him space, but now I'm pretty sure he's actually just… avoiding me."

"That’s an improvement. Usually, when something scares him, he's all fight, no flight." 

“Okay, but I _shouldn’t_ scare him, he’s my Drift partner,” Yuugi insisted. “We felt something. I mean, obviously, _he_ felt something, but – ”

“Yuugi,” Mokuba said impatiently. “That’s the scary part."

No sooner did he say it than he blushed, cheeks dark with guilt.

“It's okay. I know the feeling,” Yuugi said, his thoughts flowing backwards, into the long, lonely years before Yami or Anzu or any of his other friends. An old feeling, one he’d long since taken apart from the inside out, throwing aside what he didn't like, keeping what scraps and fragments remained – but he did remember it, the shape, the unbearable weight. How desperate he was to carry something else, something better, even if he had to build it himself. Slowly, but surely, gathering the pieces of a world he wanted to live in.

“You do?” Mokuba said.

“Yeah. I do,” Yuugi said, smiling. 

Mokuba smiled back, hesitant at first, then gathering strength.

They returned to Mokuba’s room, comfortably quiet. At the door, a young, freckled woman trotted over to them, a tote bag hanging from her elbow, greeting them with a breathless smile.

“Hey, I brought all my nail stuff,” she said, hefting the tote bag, its contents clinking pleasantly. “Who’s this?”

“Rebecca, this is Yuugi, Niisama’s new Drift partner,” Mokuba said. “Hey, question. If you wanted to get on my brother’s good side, what's your game plan?”

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. "I'm already on his good side. We have a mutual agreement to ignore each other until he texts me at, like, 3 AM to figure out your birthday present."

"Forget I asked," Mokuba muttered, and she laughed.

“Okay, okay. I’d... ask him to teach me something. Like, remember once at dinner, we were talking about space stations? And he went nuts and like, diagrammed all this orbital mechanics stuff on napkins, and wouldn’t shut up about the three-body problem. He loves, like… _explaining_ things. But the thing is, I’m smart, and I don’t need your brother to explain shit to me,” Rebecca gushed, exuberant.

“How’s that for a cheat code,” Mokuba said, looking at Yuugi, who grinned. He’d gotten a taste of that already.

“Sounds simple enough,” he said. “Sounds like you two have plans, I’ll head out – ”

“You don’t have to go, we’re just doing our nails… you can hang out. If you want,” Mokuba said, throwing his thumb casually over his shoulder, an apology tucked into the lining of his smile. The smile of someone who also, maybe, wanted to build something different.

“You know what, I’d love to,” Yuugi said. “Do you have any purple?”

* * *

Seto and Yuugi sat in the lounge, in two of the cozy, worn-down armchairs, a chess set on the table between them: Yuugi playing white, Seto black. Seto watched Yuugi as he leaned forward, hands laced together under his chin, violet eyes riveted on the chessboard. He’d been silent for a long time, thinking, planning, the Millennium Puzzle hanging from his neck, glinting in the light. The weight didn't seem to bother him. Didn't he feel it? Didn't his neck get sore? Seto had a thousand questions. But he hadn't expected Yuugi to be so good at chess. So he waited, maintaining an impassive frown, as Yuugi worked through the logic.

"So that's what happened to White Dragon," Yuugi said. His eyes flashed up to meet Seto's. " _You_ happened to White Dragon."

Seto stiffened, inhaling. Calm. Still. Now was not the time to lose his nerve.

"I gave you my reasons," he said, his voice steady. "Are they not enough?"

"Oh, sure. They put your brother, a child, in a Jaeger, and forced him to fight an unwinnable war over a dying world. Sooner or later, you two would've lost, the same way Haga and Ryuuzaki lost, and all the Rangers who lost before them. So you had to do _something_ ," Yuugi said, and moved his Queen. Six moves until he put Seto in check. "None of that means you're not a failure."

Seto's hand froze over the board, fingertips closed around his Knight. 

"What did you call me?"

"A failure," Yuugi said, with a smile he held like a knife, eyes untouched. "A pathetic, useless failure."

Deep in his chest, Seto's lungs stopped working. An overpowering stench of kaiju and human blood clogged in his throat.

"No,” he said. “You don't understand.”

"What am I supposed to understand?" Yuugi said, his face transformed by that awful smile. "You made a plan, and your brother almost died. He trusted you to protect him, and you let him down – "

Mokuba, limp and dying in the wreckage of his rigging, a bird knocked out of the sky, murmuring _what did you do? what did you do?_ as the klaxons went off, distant and dizzying, a kaleidoscopic fever dream. _GET OUT_ , they blared, the only message Seto managed to grasp from the twisting geometry of their lights, flashing all over the dark, cracked-open Conn Pod. Useless fucking machine.  Seto jerked hard on his rigging over and over, the whole contraption rattling with his efforts, to no effect. White Dragon didn’t move. 

"– you had to do something, and you couldn't even do _that_. Why should I Drift with you? Why put my life in your hands? How can I trust a fool? Face it. Every time you gamble, you lose – "

"You're wrong," Seto spat. It did nothing to stop Yuugi, bearing down on him with a terrible gaze. 

" – and now everything you've ever done means nothing,” he said, with visceral relish. “It’s all ashes. You burned it down to the ground all by yourself. When are _you_ going to understand? _You lost._ You lost before you even started – ”

With a thunderous, deafening crack, Des Gardius plunged its massive clawed hand through the visor shield, the glass exploding inwards, shards bursting through the air. It caught Seto around the chest, throwing him bodily into the back of the Conn Pod, claws closing around him with a bone-breaking crunch of armor and metal plating. Glass rained around Yuugi, who sat motionless watching as Seto kicked, trapped in Des Gardius’ titanic grip, arms pinned. 

His heart galloped in his neck, terror running cold and silver in his veins, a poison, an insanity that was going to kill him from the inside out – no matter what he did, always the same result, the same dream, always ending the same way –

“ – and I told you this would happen,” Gozaburo said. 

Seto shut his eyes.

When he opened them, Gozaburo was still there, standing in the wreckage of the Conn Pod, washed in shadows and neon light, his red suit immaculate.

Anger flared through Seto. He kicked again, a futile effort, as Gozaburo reached forward and unlatched the seal on his Ranger helmet. 

“ _Don't_ – ” Seto bit out, but cigar smoke choked him off. Gozaburo lifted the helmet off and leaned in, peering into his eyes. Panting, Seto rolled his head sideways, flinging his gaze over Des Gardius’ scaled forearm, the shattered visor of the Conn Pod, the winds whipping out of the hollow black night. Anywhere but – 

“Look at you. You’re petrified. You know how this works. Stop fighting it,” Gozaburo said, grabbing his jaw with one hand, forcing Seto’s gaze back to meet his. Gozaburo was nauseatingly close. Every line in his leathery face, the salt-and-pepper bristles of his mustache, his sour, cigar-thick breath – it was all intact, unblunted by the entropy of death or memory. Under the force of Des Gardius digging in, squeezing harder and harder, Seto's Drivesuit audibly began to crack. It was impossible to think. It was impossible just to breathe. 

“Did you really think this was going to end differently?”

Seto stuttered, another failed protest, hamstrung by the part of him that wanted to beg. He coughed, kicking a hot, wet blurt of blood over Gozaburo's hand, every nerve in his body twisting and snapping with fire.

“Tell me. Prove me wrong,” Gozaburo goaded. 

Sweating, chest heaving against the weight of Des Gardius’ claws, Seto shut his mouth. He had no proof. He had only a vain, useless hope, a fantasy.

“Nothing to say, as expected. A coward dies a thousand deaths,” Gozaburo said. “What number is this? Sixty? Four hundred and sixty-seven? Nine hundred and three?”

He released him, the imprint of his hand burning. Des Gardius began to squeeze in earnest, the metal interior of the Conn Pod and the Drivesuit armor crumpling in its grip with Seto trapped in the middle, a tremendous pressure from all sides, his bones cracking and splintering as he crumpled inwards, in excruciating, slow agony. But it was almost a relief. It was almost over. They’d reached the end. At last that massive, unyielding force, what slid through the dark waters of the seas on all sides of his life, lurking, silent, waiting, had found him –

“Or have you lost count already?”

* * *

With a sharp intake of breath, Seto awoke in the back of the helicopter. He’d lain across the jumpseats again, hoping to steal a half-hour nap. A pointless nap. His chest was hollow. His heart clattered inside it.

For a moment, he simply sat in the jumpseat, boots planted on the floor, palming sleep from his eyes. The dream was going to hang on him for hours, a stench only he could smell. But even inside the helicopter, he could sense the liveliness of the Shatterdome outside, bustling with activity, a thrumming beehive, reminding him he was whole. He was alive.

 _...Are you alright?_   Yami said. Seto laid a hand over the thigh pocket of his coveralls, touching the Puzzle through the fabric. He aimlessly patted around, searching for his headset, finding it dangling askew around his neck.

 _I'm great. Drop it_. He stepped out of the helicopter. He ignored Yami’s almost fretful curiosity all the way back to White Dragon, several minutes away in the hangar, where he relieved a random J-tech of her task applying lockwire in a maintenance crawl space below the engine turbine. She startled at the sight of him lowering his head into the cup-shaped crawlspace, ordering her to leave; something in her face compelled him to reassure her nothing was wrong with her work, and extend his hand to pull her out.

He took her place in the crawlspace, sitting with his back to a side panel and his feet braced on the metal grating. It was cool and dark, so tucked away from the rest of the hangar that the sounds of technicians working on White Dragon barely reached him, faint clangs echoing through the thick layers of raw machinery. A bright blue holographic display flared from his headset superimposing the lockwire pattern over the bolts, illuminating the space. 

He reached up, setting to work with the safety pliers, threading and twisting wire through the bolts. Eight twists per half inch. Through the bolt and around. Another eight twists. Mindless. Relaxing. His heart was fluttering like a bird. He didn’t even need to think.

Yami wafted out of the Puzzle, sitting opposite him, mirroring his posture. The small, round crawlspace would’ve been cramped if Yami was tangible. Seto found himself slightly tense anyways, half-braced for a physical contact that never came. Their legs, not tangled. Yami's forearm draped over his knee, his fingers not inches away from Seto's thigh. Every spot where they would've touched, turning inside out from the lack of it.

"Every night, you dream," Yami said. "And every time, you wake up sweating."

"So what? They’re just fucking dreams," Seto growled. 

"They’re always about Yuugi. And when you’re awake, all you do is think about Yuugi," Yami said, half wondering, half accusing.

Seto kept working, despite the chill crawling down his back. "I thought you can’t see my thoughts. Or my dreams."

"I can, but I don’t," Yami said. "It’s more like… hearing your voice through a wall. Muffled and unclear. If I was in the same room, so to speak, you’d know it."

Seto grunted.

"How about this: pick a number."

"Any number?" Seto said, lowering the pliers, frowning at him. 

Yami nodded. "Any."

Seto picked a number.

He stiffened, pressing himself into the side of the crawlspace as something pressed through his head, a light, easy grasping – as though his thoughts were hands and Yami’s thoughts were also hands and he’d laced their thought-hands together, loosely entwined, nothing more familiar than the shape of a hand and yet nothing more unfamiliar than the shape of another's. It was stranger than Drift. He jerked, his elbow slamming hard into a grating with a blinding spike of pain – stupid, nothing happened – it was not real, it _was_ real, it was all a bizarre abstraction, a ruffling of neural feathers and a pressure nonetheless, a squeeze that made him want to kick and scramble and bolt – too soon, too soon, too soon – still dreaming, still caught, still trapped –

"'e' is not a number," Yami grumbled, shifting to kneel beside Seto's legs. "Now kick me out, you're panicking." 

Denying it was pointless. In the same way Yami sensed him, Seto sensed Yami wanting him to do it, to learn how, to see he could draw the line all on his own, with a startling sincerity.

He nudged Yami out, the clenching in his chest loosening. Yami's thought-hands disappeared, leaving only a fading warmth.

“‘e’ is an irrational number," Seto said, staring at Yami, grasping for the calm rhythm of rote repetition, "which means it can't be expressed as the ratio of two integers. It  – "

"Tell me later," Yami said, irritably flapping his hand. "What's irrational is you think about Yuugi all the time, but you avoid him. And I can feel how it makes _you_ feel. When are you going to talk to him? He can handle anything you have to say."

Seto said nothing, the taste of cigar smoke still sour on his tongue.

Yami huffed with frustration.

"I know you're angry,” he said. “You bark at everyone. No one comes near you. But you're angry in a way that makes me think none of that anger is for anyone else. It's all for _yourself_. You hold it like a knife to your own neck, like… like a single wrong breath will cut you open. And I just think – "

"Shut up!” Seto shouted, tossing the pliers aside with a clatter. “Why don’t you fuck off back to your bottomless pit?!" 

He tore the Puzzle out of his thigh pocket, his thumb skipping blindly over a corner piece, trying to pry it out.

"If I go, you go," Yami said quietly. "I won't even have to do anything. You go there all on your own. I feel it. When you're dreaming."

Seto's heart skipped a beat. Several. Yami’s gaze was fixed on him, his dark red eyes alive with the slow-moving whirl of distant galaxies. Human, he reminded himself. No such thing as a god that confessed mistakes. Or madness. 

Slowly, he relaxed his hands into his lap, the Puzzle intact between them.

"I know what kind of Ranger you are, what kind of victories you're capable of… I can only imagine your failures," Yami said. “But you can trust Yuugi."

“I don’t know what kind of fantasy world _you_ live in, but this one isn’t so forgiving,” Seto snapped. “There’s no room for mistakes, or pity, or weakness. If you can’t handle it, then you deserve to be crushed by it. No one gives a damn how you feel! You win, or you die. That’s the game! That’s it!"

Yami looked at him askance, eyes narrowed; unruffled by the heat in Seto’s voice.

“So when you suit up, and you get in your Jaeger, and you go out and kill every creature that crawls out of the Breach… that’s what you fight for,” he said. “That’s the world you fight to protect?”

“ _No,_ ” Seto snarled. “I – ”

He stopped, struck by the strength of his own denial, the truth of it – so forceful and uncompromising in its rejection that it seemed ancient, almost primordial, the cry that rose up in the light of the first, distant dawn and echoed still. The first creature that ever realized it was alive, and the first that refused to die. _No_. Not a word but a resolve, a purpose, the solitary victory: he did not want to fight for that world. He never had. 

But it didn’t matter. Because every night, in every dream...

The crawlspace was quiet. Yami was as still as a lake, waiting. 

Seto looked at him, almost panting, every breath a wave in his torso. Rolling, crashing, receding. 

“It’s all... just a game,” he said, and gritted his teeth. Just pull it out. Like a splinter. Either it rots or it bleeds. “And I’m tired of losing. Even when I win, I lose.”

As a confession, it was not much. But even Yami slouched under its weight, gaze dropping to his hands, curled atop his thighs.

Seto slid lower down the side of the crawlspace, feeling every groove and bolt through his shoulders. He was glad for the dim light; it hid the burning in his face, his body, the thick acidic ooze of shame. This was a mistake. Another idiotic play. 

"What an unpleasant game," Yami said.

"Easy to master, honestly," Seto muttered.

Yami’s mouth twitched into a smile.

“Okay," he said. "Let’s play the opposite game. If you always lose, even when you win, the new rule is, you always win, even when you lose."

“That's asinine,” Seto said, but even as he said it, a thought flipped over in his head, a stupidly obvious answer to the riddle contained in Yami's game. "I let the score stand in the compatibility test. I lost to Yuugi and won a Drift partner – partners."

“See? You already know how to play. Round two. You lose,” Yami said, smirking, tapping him in the center of his chest with mostly-intangible fingertips. “What do you win?"

Seto’s mind went blank.

"What does victory look like?" Yami prompted.

“I don’t know.”

“You can imagine _something_ , at least?” 

Seto’s thoughts turned to Isis, yawning in her sweatshirt, trying to convince him of things that could not reasonably, logically, scientifically exist. 

But Yami was _here_ , with a smile just on this side of infuriating, a coy little trick of the light, curving neatly around the gravity of the deep black well they seemed to share. So Seto sighed and set his shoulders, setting himself to the task, running his thumb over the Puzzle, wondering what Yuugi had wished for… 

A chime broke the silence. 

He pulled his phone out of his back pocket.

_★MOKUBA★_   
_yo get your ass up here i’m ready!!  
6:45 PM _

_★MOKUBA★_   
_can you stop by mailroom first I ordered something  
6:45 PM _

Mokuba. Mokuba would know. 

_SETO  
on my way  
6:47 PM _

* * *

When Seto arrived to Room 12, a large package tucked under his arm, he found Mokuba sitting on the bed fully dressed, save for his stocking feet, with Pegasus in the armchair, one leg crossed over the other. Isis leaned against the wall, a ghost of a smile flitting across her face when she saw the Puzzle, which he'd tied to a belt loop, dangling by his hip. 

At the sight of them, their Millennium Items winking at him with twin gleams of light, he almost stopped short in the doorway, struck by a thought. One a master of memory, the other a master of feeling. Which made Yami a master of... what?

“Kaiba-boy! We were waiting for you. Love the look,” Pegasus said, waving at the Puzzle. 

“It’s temporary,” Seto said, with a tingle of unease. Yami withdrew into some formless pocket of his thoughts.

“Well,” Pegasus said, motioning to Isis and getting to his feet; “this next part isn’t. Ranger Kaiba One? You don’t want to put on shoes for this?”

“I don't really care, Marshal,” Mokuba said, standing up, somewhat gingerly, but smoothing the front of his white sweater with a casual sweep of his hand. He was sporting irreverent, bright orange nails. Seto swiftly fell into place beside him, setting the package down. 

“Commander Ishtar, do the honors, please,” Pegasus said, faintly irritated by Mokuba’s lack of decorum. Isis sidled forward. 

“Ranger Kaiba, as your commanding officer, I am delighted to officially relieve you of all Ranger duties and discharge you with full honors from the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps,” she said, shaking Mokuba’s hand. “Thank you for your service.”

“You’ve been a great sport,” Pegasus said, shaking his hand in turn. 

“Sure, it's been a jolly old time,” Mokuba drawled. Seto sensed, rather than saw, his grip tightening around Pegasus’ hand. “So glad I missed ninth grade to pilot a death machine. Technically a war crime."

Pegasus fixed him with a nasty smile. “Let’s not lie to ourselves, Mokuba-boy. You don’t mind that much. You _like_ feeling special.”

Mokuba grimaced, but dug in, undeterred. “I’d rather feel like the people around me give a fuck, _sir_ – ”

“ _Enough_ ,” Isis snapped, just as Seto instinctively muscled between them, pulling Mokuba back with one hand and the other rising, palm out, to push Pegasus away. She shot a venomous, warning look at the three of them. “Mokuba, you’re still living in the Shatterdome. I can and will give you kitchen duty. Let’s end this on a good note.” 

“Yes, à votre santé, frères Kaiba! Don’t fret. Someday, we’ll all drink to this and laugh,” Pegasus said, clapping Seto on the shoulder, who jerked away; “except Mokuba. He’s not old enough yet."

“Is everything a joke to you?” Seto growled.

“It’s either a joke, or it isn’t,” Pegasus said. “Why? What do you think it is?”

A question he nailed to the air, with a bizarre flash of light in his eye.

“ _Marshal_. Our business here is done,” Isis said, before Seto could reply, and that gold gaze turned on her, considering her. Her face, implacably cool, betrayed no emotion. But, Seto thought, what would that matter, to a magical Eye... 

“So it is,” Pegasus said. “Allons-y, Commander Ishtar.”

And they left, Mokuba throwing a sarcastic salute at their backs. The sudden heat that had risen in the room dropped once more to something cooler, breathable.

Seto crossed his arms. “Don't be a smartass.”

“Yeah, because you _never_ mouth off. You don't need to protect me from Pegasus, of all people. If a kaiju can’t kill me, nothing can,” Mokuba said smugly, checking his orange nails.

“Please don’t test that hypothesis,” Seto said. “What did you order?”

“Shoes. Open it for me?”

They sat on the bed next to each other as Seto opened the package, revealing a pair of lace-up white leather boots, painted with an intricate floral pattern. Mokuba propped one on his knees and began the long, slow task of lacing it, one-handed, guiding the aglet with determined precision.  

“You didn’t find anything easier? With straps?”

“I don’t care about straps. I’m walking out of here in something _cool_ ,” Mokuba said fiercely. “Also, laces are good for calibrating dexterity in my new arm. I’m gonna tie my own damn shoes.”

A quiet pride swelled through Seto. He tilted, resting his head lightly on Mokuba’s shoulder, watching Mokuba work over the boot. Beautiful movement, as nimble and smooth as a bird on the wing.

“Hey, tomorrow I’m going with Rebecca to get burritos from that place by the Shatterdome metro stop. Well, _she’s_ getting a burrito. _I’m_ getting a smoothie and hopefully I don’t ralph it up. You want one?”

“I’d love one,” Seto said, once he was done calculating the risks of a simple jaunt down to the metro stop, and throwing them out. “Steak burrito. Extra steak, extra onions, extra avocado, and the really spicy salsa.”

“Dude, I’m just gonna get you _two_ burritos,” Mokuba said, dropping the first boot back into the box and starting on the second. Seto chuckled.

“You should go down to the beach house,” he said, after a minute. “Get out of here for a week or two and rest. You’ve earned it.”

“Yeah, but I’m not going anywhere without _you_ ,” Mokuba said, like Seto was foolish for even suggesting it. Maybe he was. He inhaled, drawing the moment close, marveling, again, at the life pumping rich and strong through his brother, the subtle thrill of being alive, a single breath of the sublime; and the sliver of smile that came into view as Mokuba tipped his head, eyeing him curiously.

The dream flickered around him. Des Gardius’ claws plunging through the visor, a rain of shattered glass. Mokuba lying in the wreckage, his white Drivesuit dripping with red, whispering _i want_

Just what he wanted. 

“You’re in a mood,” Mokuba said, and Seto sat up.

“Mm," he conceded. A long smudge of grease lay across the back of his hand. He thumbed it, only smudging it more. "Listen. Do you remember… that night, when I pulled you out of White Dragon. You told me you wanted to go home. Where...”

The words broke in his throat. 

He dragged his gaze up to meet Mokuba's. He had no better confession of defeat than a small shrug, eyes fluttering.

Mokuba opened his mouth, paused, and sighed, casting his answer aside. 

The silence stretched.

“...Nowhere we’ve lived. None of those places are home to me,” he said. Seto’s heart started sinking, under a heavy swell of regret. “I just… somewhere you’re happy. Somewhere you’re not so scared all the time."

He smiled at Seto, feather-soft; a smile all the more miserable for its hopeful, yearning slant. Seto pressed a hand to his eyes, choking back a sudden wet blurt of laughter. His shoulders ached with the urge to collapse, just for a moment; to run like a river through the world, in frictionless flow, full of light.

 _Sounds like a victory to me,_ Yami said.

 _Go away_ , Seto said, without much bite, and Yami complied.

He wiped his eyes with his palm, allowing Mokuba to take the other hand, hidden between them.

"I was hoping you'd just go with 'beach house,'" he said, "but yes. I also want to go home. I’m working on it.”

“I know you are. Did you talk to Yuugi yet?”

“Not yet. I… he doesn’t know about… what happened. He doesn’t know why he’s here. Pegasus didn’t tell him, _I_ have to tell him, and I… haven’t.”

“Oh,” Mokuba said, and Seto saw, in his expression, a whisper of his own anxiety. He knew what Seto’s dreams were like. 

"But I can’t just _tell_ him,” Seto said. “I want him to… ugh. I want him to understand."

He pulled out his phone, thinking, and rapidly tapped out a message to Isis.

“I think he'll try, at least,” Mokuba said cautiously. “‘Cause he came to talk to me, and he seems like…”

“Someone who gives a fuck?” Seto said, raising his eyebrows. Mokuba grinned. “Yeah. I felt that too.”

They sat together a few minutes longer, letting the feeling take root, watching clouds lush with the deep tones of early evening roll lazily across the sky. Calm seas, promising a gentle night.

Then Mokuba let go of his hand, swinging his boots across Seto's lap one at a time so he could tie the laces. Seto slung the backpack over his shoulder, offering his arm as support as Mokuba rose, with a faint wince of effort, to his feet. Mokuba waved it away.

“You good?” Seto said.

“I’m great.” 

“Even better,” Seto said, smiling, opening the door, and they went through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i could write isis and kaiba and their testy friendship for like, 5000 pages.
> 
> Chapter 7 (Opposite Game: B-SIDE) at the end of January, fingers crossed. If not, sometime in February. surely kaiba can't come up with a less painful team bonding exercise? like bowling? or a paint-and-sip?
> 
> thank you for reading! comments/kudos are always appreciated 😚


	7. Opposite Game (B-SIDE)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He stood there for a long time, so quiet, so still, that for a moment Yuugi thought the memory ended there – that Kaiba remembered nothing after his stepfather left the room except a folder in his hands, an afternoon breeze wafting in, and the news, playing the same footage over and over again, an obsessive gouging, deeper and deeper into the mind. The apocalypse as nervous tic. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man vs society. Man vs nature (beasts). Man vs monster (kaiju). Man vs monster (the other). Man vs man (stepfather). Man vs nature, or man vs nurture (not nurtured)? Man vs meaning. Man vs meaninglessness. Man vs the abyss. Man vs self?
> 
> this fic topped a hundred kudos... thank you all so much!!! 😭😭😭
> 
> content warning: Gozaburo shows up again, via Drift-enabled flashback; he's emotionally, but not physically, rough.

TIME: Yami didn’t know. A long time had passed since Seto had dutifully, resentfully delivered his laptop and tablet to Pegasus. Then he'd leaned against the edge of Mokuba's desk for a while, fiddling with a seven-by-seven Rubik's cube as Mokuba labored through some arcane mathematics on his laptop, pecking at keys one at a time. Seto solved the cube. Scrambled it. Amused himself with inventing a new pattern and solving for that, between tossing out bits of advice. Watching the colors of the cube move between Seto’s nimble fingers, with creaky twists of plastic, Yami itched to take his hands – not hold, but possess – and solve the cube himself. 

Such as it was, with Seto still cagey, still holding his breath, like the gentle spell of his evening would break at any moment, Yami stayed put, folded away between Seto’s senses and his thoughts. Only after Mokuba finally shooed Seto to bed did Yami sidle out. It felt good to take a form, and see his own hand, however transparent, set firmly against the lightless air. He felt more himself. 

Seto was lying on his side in bed, back turned to the room, so restlessly awake he burned in the dark. Every stray thought hissed and snapped off him like the last fidgeting sparks of a dying fire, committing the day to soft ash. Yami, sitting down at Seto’s desk by the cube, kept his distance. Unlike Yuugi, who thrived on talk and the sheer pleasure of another’s presence, Seto seemed to only tolerate conversation, and was liberated by solitude. And he’d had a long day. 

So Yami left him alone to study the cube. Simpler than it looked, he realized. The key was to reduce it, solve for the centers first... 

“Can you solve it?” Seto said. Yami looked over to see him propped up on his elbows, covers sliding down his bare torso.

"I could, but, you know..." 

Yami lifted his hand over the cube and lowered it, slowly, through the cube, until his palm reached the desk and went through that, too. 

“So how come you’re not falling through my chair?” Seto said.

“I imagine a chair,” Yami said. He stood up and sat down again, hovering in mid-air, one leg crossed over the other. He propped his chin on his knuckles and smiled. “And I sit. See?”

“I hate this,” Seto muttered as he turned on the light, even though Yami sensed that he _didn’t_ , not really. He was more intrigued than anything else. He threw the sheets back, rolled out, and picked up the cube, returning to sit cross-legged on the bed. 

"You tell me how and I’ll rotate it," he said, as Yami sat down next to him. 

"I'd rather just do it myself… lend me a hand?" Yami tried.

Seto hesitated. For a fraction of a second, Yami didn’t think he’d go for it.

Then he offered his left forearm, his non-dominant hand, a stiff, halting gesture. 

"For science," he said, firmly.

Yami knelt behind him, reaching around with his own slender, transparent forearm and aligning it with Seto’s. This part was unnecessary – he didn’t need to show himself – but despite Seto offering, his jaw was clenched, his arm braced. So maybe it was necessary, to let Seto see where he ended and Yami began, and vice versa, and to mark the moment where Yami lowered his arm into Seto’s arm, like sliding into a pool of water, without so much as a ripple. Just a feeling of _closing over_. Then it became _their_ arm, spreading their long, graceful fingers, tendons flexing across the back of their hand, heartbeat thumping down into their wrist from a distant heart. 

Yami made a fist and almost shuddered – muscle and bone and blood, no different from Yuugi’s hand, and yet rich with an undeniable promethean power, coursing hotly through their veins. It was the kind of hand that stole fire from the gods. Maybe it already had.

Seto was staring, wide-eyed, at their hand, in fascinated horror.  

“Remember, you can throw me out whenever,” Yami said, inches from his ear. He rose up and pitched forward, slightly, to better see the Rubik’s cube between their hands. If he were solid, he’d rest his chin on Seto's shoulder. 

Together they started solving the cube, in an uneasy but determined duet: one holding the cube firm as the other rotated layers, moving each bright face into place. 

“This is so fucking weird,” Seto murmured, filling out the center of the blue face, and Yami smiled. This was normal, actually. He'd been in similar positions with Yuugi countless times before, doing vastly different things – softer things, warmer, sweeter – but that was between them. 

“Is it really all that different from a Jaeger? Two people controlling one machine?” Yami quipped, now filling out the red. 

“I’m not a machine,” Seto said reflexively. Yami let it go.

They kept going, slowly turning layers of the cube, a motion that came awkwardly for Yami, unused to the size and fit of this hand. Seto was barely paying attention, every turn by instinct, his mind working through some other puzzle. 

“Yami,” he said.

"Kaiba."

“What makes you so sure Yuugi is..." he tested the word. "Trustworthy?"

“Because I’m here,” Yami said, after a moment. Seto’s confusion flickered through him, stirring up a multitude of questions.

“It wasn’t always like this,” Yami said, before he asked any of them. “I didn't spring out of Yuugi's's forehead like this, fully formed, like Pallas Athena. When he solved the Puzzle and woke me up, I was… different.”

He was prepared, if Seto asked, to talk about it; to give back some of what Seto had given him. How he’d found himself in a world he didn’t understand, with nothing to call his own save a blazing power and a single mandate: something terrible was happening, and he had to stop it. But what? Where? 

Trying to extract answers, and vengeance, from the petty tyrants of Yuugi's daily life – the classmates, the shopkeepers, the back-alley bullies – had only felt equally petty. Yuugi was the one who'd solved it, who'd enlisted and aimed his towering urge to fight in a direction that made sense, before they ever even spoke a word to each other. Something terrible was coming out of the ocean. 

“So, what, he made you in his own image?” Seto said, with an undisguised note of contempt. 

“He didn't _make_ me into _anything_ ,” Yami said frostily. That was an odd direction to take. “He only gave me room to become myself. To discover there's more to me than just terror and rage and... lashing out.”

Seto scoffed.

Yami wasn’t fooled, not after several days together. He leaned sideways, chest pressed against Seto's shoulder, to study Seto’s face in profile. The half-light of the reading lamp washed away the usual stony texture of his face, his expression muted. But his eyes, riveted on the cube, had lost none of their electric luminosity. Thinking about Yuugi again, and Yami, and himself, trying to figure out how they all fit together.

Like Yuugi, Yami thought. Both of them quick, clever thinkers, easily ensnared by riddles and intricacies. Both handsome at any angle, although Seto was more muscular, with thicker arms and broader shoulders. Just as easy to fluster, if more offended by it, and better at hiding it. And while Yuugi was... more disappointed with the world, rather than angry, Yami felt the same indistinct longing from both of them, for a nameless inverse, defined in opposition: _NOT THIS._

Seto glanced sidelong at him, a blink followed by an arresting flash of blue. 

“What?” he said. 

“Just thinking,” Yami said sheepishly, knowing he’d been caught staring. 

“About?”

“How I’ve enjoyed discovering more of _you_ ,” Yami said.

Seto frowned, mustering a retort...

...a rosy flush swept across his cheeks. He was also staring. 

Yami smiled. The silence grew between them, not empty but full, a slow upwelling of feeling so hot and clear that words failed it. But if he had to pick, he'd choose these: _I want_ _you_ , a delight, a defiance, a storm; every look a lightning strike. 

It would take nothing to close the distance, mere inches. All they had to do was tilt towards each other. Even less to go into the Puzzle, where Yami didn't have to make do with only the sight of Seto’s half-parted lips, the sound of his weightless inhale, but could also touch him, smell him, taste him. He wanted to throw both arms around his neck and pull him down on top of him, just to see what he would do. Something spectacular, he was sure.

They were both vibrantly aware of it. They were both hesitating: Yami, because Seto was, and...

"Are you sure?” Seto breathed.

His question was like a Rubik’s cube all on its own, with a meaning so scrambled Yami didn’t even know where to begin. He dropped their hand onto his chest, where Seto’s heart was thumping as loud as a drum. Solitude was liberating, sometimes. But so was knowing you weren’t alone.

“I’m not sure about a lot of things,” he said, and smiled. “Like how airplanes stay up. But if you want to explain it to me again, I – "

"Okay. Shut up," Seto muttered, with a wry smile to match, eyes closing as he tilted his head forward. Yami rose to meet him, with delicious abandon, and they twisted together. The bedroom was already disappearing, the walls of the labyrinth rising up around them. Yami felt himself remade, starting from the point in space where their lips locked, the rest of him hurtling out from that radiant star. Smell followed touch, foresty, not fresh but lived-in; followed by taste, slippery sweet, with a fading cool burn of mouthwash. Between them, their shared left arm split back into two, in pursuit of a far more common, but no less sublime body-sharing –

They were yanked back into the room by an urgent stage-whisper through the door. "Niisama!"

Seto jolted away, hastily throwing the cube aside in a tangle of bedcovers, leaving Yami somewhat thankful that he wasn't solid enough to bruise.

He scrambled out of bed, padded over to the door and opened it. From his spot on the bed, Yami saw Seto's figure thrown into relief by the brighter light from Mokuba’s room. The right word for his shoulders was not _broad_ but _biteable_ , right in the curves where they met his neck... Yami fumed, privately.

“I didn’t wake you up, right?" Mokuba said, unseen. "I thought I heard you talking to… Oh my god, wait. Talking to Yuugi’s vintage tamagotchi?!”

“Still up,” Seto intoned. “What's wrong? What do you need?”

“I can’t figure out this problem.”

“I thought you didn’t want my help. I thought you wanted me to, quote, ‘stop hovering and go the fuck to sleep,’ end quote."

“Okay, _whatever._ I take it _back_. Now help me,” Mokuba groused. 

"You’re perfectly capable of figuring it out all on your own. I know you can do it," Seto said patiently.

"Bro, please. I’ve been banging my head against the wall for like, an hour now."

A pause. Again, not empty, but full, with all the usual flurries of emotion that whirled through him whenever he looked at his brother: adoration gratitude _I'd die for you_ and guilt.

With a low huff, Seto folded. 

 _Stay there,_ he said to Yami, turning back to grab a sweater off his chair. He vanished into Mokuba’s room, pulling the door half-closed behind him, leaving Yami alone and vibrating with unreleased energy on the bed. Reminding him of the semantics – that he could not ‘stay’ anywhere when he was bound to Seto by the Puzzle, and if Seto moved any farther away, he’d have to follow – seemed pointless. So he just withdrew from their shared mental space.

Seto’s irritation at the interruption was plain. But it was fading. Mokuba said something that sprung a laugh out of him, rippling and affectionate, coming out of a love so vast it was oceanic. With a sigh, Yami settled in to wait.

By the time Seto came back to his room, Yami’s thoughts had long stopped flowing, pooled into a warm, dark corner of consciousness. From the way Seto fell into bed, a graceless flop, Yami knew whatever spark they’d ignited was out, smothered by the usual preoccupations and self-rebuke. Or self-control. It all felt the same with him.

Seto blindly thunked the Rubik’s cube onto the nightstand next to the Puzzle and rolled over, frowning at the ceiling, thinking, thinking, thinking, always thinking, his mind a perpetual motion machine. Yami sensed a bristling anxiety, and a bizarrely familiar anticipation: the same Yuugi felt when he had a new puzzle in hand, knowing he was only moments away from understanding. Everything would fall into place. 

Any second now. 

When Seto’s hand drifted up to his mouth, tracing his lips with his fingertips, brows furrowed in thought, Yami couldn’t resist any longer. Taste and touch and smell were still with them, in echoes, and impossible to deny. 

 _Kaiba,_ he said, and hesitated.

Was this a mistake, he wanted to ask. Are we being reckless? Do you regret it already? Don't you feel the same way – or feel _something_ , at least? But he didn’t. 

His questions, unvoiced, nonetheless had a momentum of their own.

 _This isn’t the right time for fooling around,_ Seto said. 

Yami bit back his insulted retort. Fooling around! Damning it all as some opportunistic passing fancy! That was not what he felt. That was not what _Seto_ felt. 

 _I don’t 'fool around,'_ he said. _And I don’t think you do, either._

 _Get out of my head for five fucking seconds_ , came the snappish reply. After a tense silence, he added, _I’m giving the Puzzle back to Yuugi tomorrow._

Yami surrendered. Some requests, when it came to sharing a body, were unimpeachable, and Seto had drawn his line. He let the distance between them unfurl, withdrawing into the Puzzle until Seto was not much more than a distant, far-flung light, winking across dark waters. 

Just enough to see: he was thinking about Yuugi again, and Yami, and himself, aligning them all in a secret constellation. And as he curled up in bed, lying bonelessly still, thoughts ablaze, Yami caught a gleam of a baffling, brand-new feeling, one he hadn’t seen in Seto until now. It took him a moment to remember its name: it was, of all things, hope.

* * *

“And _this_ ,” Yuugi said, sweeping his hand out with a showman’s flair, “is our Jaeger.”

His mother, Sayo, and Sugoroku tilted their heads back, gazes climbing up, up, up to White Dragon Mark III’s sapphire-blue visor. In his other hand, Yuugi had a bag of Kit Kats, a good-luck gift. He rummaged through the bag for a strawberry Kit Kat and carefully unwrapped it as they admired the Jaeger.

The Jaeger towered over the floor of the hangar, a sentinel, her white hull dented and scratched with the best efforts of kaiju. The main hangar bay doors were open to the outdoors, letting muggy morning air pool into the hangar from the flight deck. At the opposite end of the hanger, teams of technicians were crawling over the dismantled pieces of White Dragon, Mark IV, still under repair. 

“Wow,” Sugoroku said appreciatively. “That’s a work of art.”

“It looks a little banged up,” Sayo said, her lined face creasing with a frown. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

"I'm a _Ranger_ , Mom," Yuugi said, with some exasperation. "Moot point."

"Tsk! You can't blame me, Ranger Mutou," she said, gleefully cupping his face between her hands, plumping his cheeks. "You're still my sweet baby boy – "

"Mom! Please, there's _people_ around – "

Laughing, he pulled free, just as someone interrupted them with a stiff cough. Yuugi swiveled to see Kaiba, giving the three of them an odd look. His heart leapt at the sight of him – mostly, the sight of what dangled, gleaming, from his neck.

“...Your family?” Kaiba said, to Yuugi, who decided not to question his arrival. He'd made sure to keep his distance, following that moment at dinner two nights ago and his conversation with Mokuba. The message had been clear: Kaiba would come around when he was ready for it. 

“Yeah. Mom, Jiichan, this is Ranger Kaiba,” he said. “My drift partner.”

“Yes, yes, I know you. And that,” Sugoroku said, grinning broadly, motioning to the Puzzle. “Yuugi told me you came by the Game Shop, once upon a time. Funny how things come together. Did you solve it?”

“I did,” Kaiba said. 

“Do you mind if I ask what you wished for?”

“A sandwich,” Kaiba said, so straight-faced that Yuugi wasn't sure if he was joking or not. "Yuugi, talk to me for a moment.”

Yuugi followed Kaiba several yards away, to stand by the massive boot of the Mark III Jaeger. 

“Do you have my locket?” Kaiba said.

Yuugi pulled the locket out of his collar.  Kaiba took the Puzzle off and held it with both hands, frowning intently, making no move to give it back. Talking to Yami, Yuugi realized, with a small start of recognition. 

Then Kaiba pried the Eye piece out of the Puzzle. As soon as it was free, he reeled, drunkenly, head rolling in bafflement. Without thinking, Yuugi reached out, steadying him by the elbow. To his surprise, Kaiba didn’t nudge him off.

“Everything feels all… super clear, right? Like all the colors are brighter?” Yuugi said.

“It happens to you, too?” Kaiba said, staring around the hangar, blinking through the aftereffects of disconnection.

"Yeah. Don’t worry, it wears off.”

"Weird," Kaiba muttered, and offered both Puzzle and piece back to Yuugi.

"Did you polish this?" Yuugi asked, shoving the bag of Kit Kats into the front pocket of his sweater and taking the Puzzle, now brightened to a smooth, clean sheen, the color of sunset. "And what happened to the cord?"

"It was fraying. I got rid of it," Kaiba said. "The chain is industrial strength, so it'll hold up for years. If it's too long, I'll cut it."

Yuugi looped the sturdy cable chain over his head and gently released the Puzzle, its familiar weight settling just over his solar plexus. It was a little presumptuous of Kaiba to ‘fix’ a thing he didn't own, without asking permission, but from Kaiba it came off more like an instinct than an insult. 

“No, no, it’s perfect, thank you,” he said, smiling, taking the locket off and dropping it into Kaiba’s outstretched hand. “I didn’t do anything with yours except, you know, not lose it.” 

“That’s all I asked,” Kaiba said, popping the clasp, glancing at the photo, and clapping it shut again, a quick, reflexive gesture. 

Yuugi pushed the Eye piece into place. Like a rush of fresh air, Yami was there again, brimming with affection. 

_Aibou!_

_You’re all shiny now,_ Yuugi said. _Did you have fun? Talk everything out?_

 _Well, most things,_ Yami said casually. _I’ll fill you in later. This morning he called me the 'bastard child of LSD and a ouija board.’ Then he showed me how the burst cannon works. Oh, that’s his 'this is important’ face._

Kaiba had his hands on his hips and was frowning at Yuugi, not with malice or disapproval, but with keen intent, eyes burning in his serious expression. For a moment, the hangar floor seemed to disappear, taking all of its clamor with it. Only his attention remained, and the whispered thrill of realizing he wanted an answer only Yuugi could give him.

“I scheduled a Drift for tonight at seven. Does that work for you?" he said.

"Another slow-entry?"

"No. A full Drift, with her," Kaiba said, swinging his head up towards White Dragon, Mark III. "We're going on a RABIT hunt."

Yuugi paused. Something struck him as deeply cryptic. 

“Is that all the information I'm going to get?”

“Yes.” 

A reply so tightly delivered, so remorseless in its lack of give, that Yuugi could only read it as one thing: a challenge. But he’d be lying if a little mystery didn’t entice him.

“Works for me.” 

“Great," Kaiba said. "I won't keep you any longer. They’re waiting for you.”

Sayo and Sugoroku were huddled together, watching them with conspiratorial curiosity.

“Yeah, I’m taking them on a tour,” Yuugi said. “You're welcome to join us, if you want.”

“I’m working,” Kaiba said swiftly. But he smiled, softening some of that cold impact. “Making sure the Jaeger's safe for your mom’s sweet baby boy.” 

Yuugi laughed, blushing. 

“She appreciates it. Kit Kat for good luck?” he said, holding out the bag.

“I don’t believe in luck.”

"For the freakin’ flavor, then.”

Kaiba snorted and plunged his hand into the bag, ferreting out a spicy dark chocolate Kit Kat. With a flick of his eyes towards the Puzzle, he plucked out another of the same flavor and pressed it into Yuugi’s hand.

“That’s for Yami,” he said. With a polite nod to Sayo and Sugoroku, he excused himself and took off, back to the Mark IV, changing course to flag down Isis at the far end of the hangar.

Yami stretched and expanded, unfurling light and strong like a sail through Yuugi. He was restless, his pent-up energy almost staticky, like he'd been sitting in a cramped space far too long. Yuugi let him slip forward, unwrapping the Kit Kat and savoring the hot-dark-bitter taste as it melted and sizzled over their tongue. Yami crunched through the wafer, following Kaiba’s retreating figure across the hangar floor, smiling.

 _Kaiba’s giving you chocolates now?_ Yuugi said, half-teasing. There was more than just amusement in Yami’s gaze. A slow, fiery blossoming, or a door left unlocked. It both did and didn’t bother him, which made him want to kick himself. Drift compatibility was different for everyone.

Yami only laughed, dry and satisfied. Then he fell back into the mental shadows, as Yuugi returned to his family.

* * *

FROM: ASTERION DARTZ <asterion.dartz@ppdc.navy.mil>  
CC: MAXIMILLIAN PEGASUS <maximillian.pegasus@ppdc.navy.mil,  
SUBJECT: RE: requests from R Kaiba

_Commander Ishtar,_

_His requests are denied. Given his recent behavior, it’s clear to me - and should be to you - that Ranger Kaiba lacks judgment and discipline. Allowing him leave, now or in the future, is completely out of the question until I see fit to grant it. He requires more supervision, not less._

_As for higher-concentration orichalcum gel: his stated reasons are flimsy at best and fail to justify going past safe o-gel tolerances. He will either re-submit his request directly to me, with his real reasons thoroughly elucidated, or he will proceed with his Drift test with standard o-gel, without complaint._

_Continue to keep me apprised._

ASTERION DARTZ  
Admiral, Naval Branch  
Pan-Pacific Defense Corps

FROM: MAXIMILLIAN PEGASUS <maximillian.pegasus@ppdc.navy.mil>  
SUBJECT: RE: RE: requests from R Kaiba

_No surprises there from ASSterion. Took him off the thread. Are you going to tell k boy, or should I? What does he want the o-gel for?_

MAXIMILLIAN PEGASUS  
Marshal, Naval Branch  
Pan-Pacific Defense Corps

FROM: ISIS ISHTAR <isis.ishtar@ppdc.navy.mil>  
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: requests from R Kaiba

_I’ll handle it._

ISIS ISHTAR  
Domino Shatterdome Base Commander, Naval Branch  
Pan-Pacific Defense Corps

Seto took the news as expected: with a stormy, resentful scowl. Isis stood next to him, near the tall windows of LOCCENT, gazing down at the busy hangar floor far below. They were silent, Seto fuming with his arms crossed and Isis fiddling with her cuffs, giving him a moment. It had given her no pleasure to tell him no, he could not take Mokuba down to their vacation house in Kyushu for several days, and even less to tell him why.

“So I’m just stuck here? Is that it?” he said, tossing a hand with disgust. “My brother almost died! All I want is to get him out of here for a few days, so he can _rest_ , then come back and do my job! Is that really too much to fucking ask for?”

If she had to answer: no. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was barely talking _to_ her, his voice low, drenched with bitterness. He was, for a few seconds, simply an unrestrained wave, breaking apart on some inner shore. 

She squeezed his shoulder. At a glance from him, she dropped her hand. There was only so much comfort and pity he’d allow her to give. 

“Are you going to resubmit your o-gel request?” she said.

“No. I will not roll over and perform tricks on command, like some mongrel dog,” Seto growled. “I’ll die before I explain myself to fucking Dartz!”

His frustration was almost visible in the air, like a shimmer of heat. Her own frustration was worse, full of churning impatience. She shoved it aside in favor of sifting through their conversation several nights ago. Seto solved the Puzzle. Now he wanted high-concentrate orichalcum gel, a neural amplifier. From point A to… point C. And point B?

"What about me?" she said.

"What?" he said, throwing her a suspicious glance.

"Let me guess," Isis said, the usual tingle of premonition prickling at her collarbone. To call it a guess was disingenuous. "You have a theory about the Puzzle, and you need stronger o-gel to test it. You’re onto something. Am I right?”

He glowered at her.

She pressed back with a firm stare, holding his gaze.

"Okay,” he conceded. “You’re right. I’m onto something.”

“And?”

“And it sounds _insane_ ,” he said heatedly, “but I need to figure this out. I _need_ to know. If I’m right, it could change... everything."

Everyone knew he was prone to melodrama, fits of hyperbole; not _I’m mad_ but _I want his head on a spike_. Next to him, in their private corner of LOCCENT, Isis heard none of that. 

And she’d spent the night lying awake in bed, pinned in place by the near-sighted eye of the Tauk, trying to parse out what was a vision of the future and what was just a pointless fucking nightmare. She was so tired of running in place. 

“Okay. I can get you the orichalcum gel. Off the books. Admiral Dartz won't know about it,” Isis said. “But you owe me one, and I'm calling it in. I want full disclosure from you – ”

“If I tell you, are you going to try and stop me?” 

Stubborn as hell! His question had all the telltale bite of him buckling down for a fight. Isis swerved away from her initial gambit. He wouldn’t move an inch unless she gave him a mile. 

“ – full disclosure _after_ the Drift test,” she said, crossing her arms. “I trust you to not to do anything that would put you, or your Drift partner, in any unnecessary danger. ”

Seto gave her a sharp look, half apprehension, half blank disbelief, a thousand thoughts clearly rocketing through his head. Double- and triple-checking his plan, to make sure it measured up; reassessing her and whatever wall he’d built between them. Isis maintained her composure, waiting. He was still trying to read her face for the ruse, for the sign of a lie.

“You’re serious,” he said.

She said nothing.

He released the last of it with a sigh. “Fine. You'll get me the orichalcum gel, and I'll tell you after.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, as usual,” she said, full of private triumph. It was not every day one outmaneuvered him and got roped into his confidence, all in one fell stroke. 

“I’m telling you right now, it might be nothing at all, except me just… losing my mind. This fucking war,” he muttered.

Isis shot him a dry look.

“As if you're the only one who feels that way,” she said.

* * *

The inside of the Conn Pod of White Dragon was no different from the inside of Black Dragon's. There was the command console, with its blinking displays; the grip controls, clamped to Yuugi’s wrist; the Spinal Clamp, a balanced weight on his spine, the green light of the orichalcum data gel in a hazy ring around his line of sight. After three years of practice drops and combat drills and Drift tests, he and Yami knew the Conn Pod inside and out. If he’d walked in blindfolded, he’d still know where everything was. 

The only difference: instead of Joey to his right, a sunflower in an all-black Drivesuit, there was Kaiba, grim-faced in white. The suit technicians had dressed them for the test in calm, if nervous, quiet. Yami didn’t know what he had planned, only that he wanted to tell them something. But Yuugi had sensed, in Yami, an uneasy vindication. 

All the way across the hangar bay, the air still tinted with the last of dusk, LOCCENT was an illuminated yellow strip of windows with a mostly indistinct figure standing at a console: Isis, monitoring the test.

“Good evening, Rangers. For the record: this is a routine Drift status check,” she said, her melodic voice flowing crisply through the radio. There was a distant click from her end; in tandem, Kaiba lifted his hand, hitting a switch on the comms. “Off the record, you’re using an orichalcum gel with a concentration 18.6% higher than combat standard, per Ranger Kaiba's request. As a result, the effects of Drift will be heavily amplified. Ranger Mutou, if you would like to claim there’s an issue with your helmet and swap out for the usual, the moment is now.”

Yuugi glanced sideways; Kaiba was looking at him. Another small challenge.

“I’m good,” he said.

Another click. The recorder was back on. “You will enter Drift as normal, and leave at the moment of your choosing. However, given that your stated intention is to chase a RABIT, White Dragon’s kinetic systems must go offline before we proceed. Ranger Kaiba, engage ‘ghost in the machine’ protocols.” 

Kaiba reached forward and flipped through several controls of the command console. 

“‘Ghost in the machine’ protocols are engaged,” he said, and turned his head, staring straight at the Puzzle, hanging from the side of Yuugi’s rig like dashboard dice. A thought darted crystal-clear through his eyes.

“‘Ghost in the machine’ confirmed,” Isis said. “This will be your first full Drift together. Ranger Mutou, are you ready?”

“I’m ready, Commander,” Yuugi said. 

“Ranger Kaiba?”

A pause. Kaiba exhaled.

“Fire away.”

"Excellent. Pilot-to-pilot protocol engaging. Prepare for neural handshake in T minus fifteen, fourteen, thirteen...”

The Conn Pod was quiet, save for her voice and a static crackle from Kaiba. He was breathing deep and rapid, the front of his Drivesuit visibly rising and falling with each breath.

“...three, two, one. Neural handshake initiated.”

No different from Drifting with Joey, Yuugi reminded himself – no different from Yami – 

as Kaiba’s presence exploded through his head, a comet racing through the blackness of space, blazing hot. And there was yes, fear, a child’s cry of PLEASE, NO, I DON’T the tail of the comet a reckless whip of desperate faith, a gamble, betting on Yuugi I DON’T UNDERSTAND staggering guilt, looping, twisting itself inside out over and over what have i and over and over what have i done and over again and the fire itself, a blinding rage of jaws clenched around its cold, frozen core, a furious refusal I DON’T I DON’T UNDERSTAND the promise a constant oppression the promised ease of endless silence

i don’t understand. please. why

“Neural handshake, strong and holding,” Isis said, as Yuugi reeled from the force of impact, and they plunged into memory. 

 

 

Games. 

Yuugi knew those, hands shuffling a deck of cards with fluid grace, a stack of checkers, chess pieces dancing across the black-and-white battlefield. A half-remembered father: that too. A large window, full of night. His own face, scowling down at him from the opposite end of a staff. You lost. You _failed_. And the punishment for failure is 

the same window, curtains drawn. 

An ink-black surf crashed around him as he carried Mokuba. I'm sorry. Almost there. I'm so sorry. White Dragon's growl vibrated through every memory, crashing into Kaiba like two storms coming together: all at once a singular force, bristling with thunder and power and rage. They turned to Yuugi, an anointed gleam in their eyes, and dragged him in.  

“There,” they growled, pointing at the window, sunlit, half-open. Next to it was a tall, wide bookshelf. A bee flew through the cascade of memories, in drunken curves and aerials, cutting a path with needle clarity – they lunged onto the memory, seizing it, as a glass rose up, aimed by a small hand, and caught the bee. 

It bounced back onto the bookshelf, buzzing dully, crawling along the rim of the glass. The other memories disappeared. White Dragon faded to a distant hum. 

Yuugi found himself, with Kaiba, in an elegant little study overlooking a broad, lush lawn, awash in sunlight. A desk busy with schoolwork sat by the windows. The bookshelf ran the length of the wall, packed with thick texts that themselves made a wall, a solid mass of intimidating intellectual and physical density. One of them was open on the coffee table, bookmarked and annotated. Along the opposite wall was a plush L-shaped couch. A flat-screen TV mounted in a cabinet was showing the news, volume on mute: footage of Pale Beast rampaging through San Francisco two weeks earlier. It all had a distinctly hushed and studious air: a place of frigid purpose.

Yami manifested beside Yuugi. The three of them cut strange figures, standing on the exquisite oriental rug, completely armored in white Drivesuits. Paying them no mind was a boy with the build of a matchstick, studying the bee he'd caught with a flickering gaze. Twelve years old. 

Kaiba took off his glove and nudged his younger self's hand aside. With the edge of the glass, he carefully guided the bee into his cupped palm, closed his other hand over it, and went to the window, freeing the bee into the warm afternoon. An almost reverent release, fingers uncurling, the bee ascending from the modest altar of his palm into the golden air.

He returned to the bookshelf. Again the bee was trapped under the glass, lurching across the wood, like he'd never touched it at all. A sadistic little magic trick. _Now you see it..._

Kaiba turned to Yuugi and Yami, with a look full of warning. 

"We know," Yuugi said. "It's a memory. It can't be changed."

"This is your home?" Yami said.

"A place I lived. I assume I'll find the labyrinth if I leave the room?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll be in there."

With a quick, final glance at himself, Kaiba slipped through the door of the study, shutting it behind him. Leaving to do what? Yuugi looked at Yami, who shrugged. They turned back to the boy, who was sliding the glass off the bookshelf onto a scrap of paper, ever so cautious, pushing the bee forward. Once it was safely on the scrap, he held his makeshift glass-and-paper container up to eye-level, frowning. 

"Kaib… er, Seto?" Yuugi said, experimentally. Joey’s memory-selves had a habit of chatter, like talking to a diary; they loved to explain. Maybe Kaiba’s did, too. “Did you make a little friend?”

“It's for Mokuba," Seto said, his voice looser and higher than his older self's precise growl. "He won't go play outside 'cause there's _bees_ in the plants, and he's scared they’ll sting him. I just want to show him it’s fine."

“That’s nice of you,” Yuugi said. Seto flashed him another frown, an expression intimidating at twenty but almost biteless at twelve. Almost. 

“He's being a _baby_ ,” he said scathingly, lowering the glass.

“Still, it’s nice,” Yuugi said, smiling, with an odd twinge at the bafflement flaring secretly under that suspicious little face. “Are you – ”

The door opened. 

Seto snapped to attention, every trace of emotion vanishing from his face like a flock of startled birds. The person who came through the door was not Kaiba, but an older man in a dark red suit, with slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair and a thick mustache. 

Kaiba's memory supplied the name, like a whisper into Yuugi's ear: Gozaburo. 

“What are you doing? What is that?” Gozaburo said. 

“Nothing,” Seto said. “A bee. _Apis cerana japonica_.”

“Well, stop dawdling and get rid of it.”

Seto took a tentative half-step towards the open window. 

“Just be done with it, Seto. I don’t want more pests in the house,” Gozaburo said.

For a fraction of a second – an eternity, from where Yuugi and Yami stood, watching – Seto hesitated. Then he lifted the glass, crumpling the scrap of paper in his fist, and dropped it, soundless, into a wastebasket by the desk. 

“Now,” Gozaburo said. “You wanted to talk?”

“Yes,” Seto said stiffly, forcing his shoulders down. “About the assignment you gave me, the small-arm plasma rifle – ”

"You haven't started?"

"I will. I just – "

“What’s the issue? It shouldn’t be too difficult for you,” Gozaburo said. 

"No, I can do it.” 

“If your brother’s distracting you again – ”

" _No_ ," Seto protested, every question chopping into him with the force of an ax into a tree. "That's not the issue – "

“Then what _is?”_ Gozaburo said. 

"I don't understand why I'm doing it!" Seto snapped, lurching hard and furious into the argument. He immediately stopped short, regret striking wildly through his eyes. 

A beat of silence, glowering at each other – with a determined huff, cut off from any other route, Seto charged forward. "I don’t understand why we’re wasting time and resources on building plasma rifles for people to kill each other, when we _should_ be focusing on how to kill kaiju. They’ve killed thousands of people already. Our existing defenses are... _weak_. It’s _pathetic_. A wall is a stupid idea! If we win the Jaeger project contract, we could stop making all of this without even denting revenue! It just doesn’t make sense to keep – "

"What's the point of all this rambling?” Gozaburo said. Seto looked stricken. With a surge of anger, Yuugi took a step forward, overcome with protest. Yami grabbed his hand and pulled him back into place, reminding him with a firm glance that interrupting was futile, reassuring him with their fingers laced together.

“I mean, _strategically_ ,” Seto said, seizing the word, “it’s a strategic error. If we're divided, they conquer. If we’re all just fighting each other, that’s a waste of time, and a... misallocation. I mean, of _resources_. And it’ll be that much easier for the kaiju to... to win.”

“Logically sound,” Gozaburo said, slipping his hands into his pockets, “almost. But you’re missing something.”

Seto froze.

Even stock-still, Yuugi had the sense he was scrambling for the right answer.

“Father.” A terse admission of ignorance.

“Tomorrow, I decide to stop all production of light weaponry,” Gozaburo said. “You design a big, magical superweapon that beats every kaiju into pulp, and you seal the Breach. Do you know what we’ll do the day after?”

As he spoke, he leaned over, bending at the waist, fixing Seto with an uncompromising stare from inches away. Seto's shoulders were up again, tense, a tightly-coiled spring. 

A second passed. Two.

“Answer me."

“R…” Seto breathed. “Restart production.”

“Correct,” Gozaburo said, standing straight. “The kaiju are irrelevant. Do you know why?"

Seto's gaze slid sideways, to the flat-screen TV, where Pale Beast was lumbering chaotically through San Francisco, smashing streets and buildings and people underfoot. The same several seconds of shaky footage played over and over again, in hypnotic, endless loops, his eyes glassing over as he searched for the answer.

In vain: Gozaburo took him by the jaw, slowly turning his gaze forward again, a small face in a large hand.

“Because man is ruled by fear,” he said. “Because there is nothing on this earth we hate as much as each other. Nothing as loathsome as the stranger. No one as dangerous as a lover. There's not a single person who doesn’t live in fear of pain and suffering. The kaiju mean nothing, Seto. The real enemy is always here. And that war will never end.”

“I… but – ”

“You don’t believe me.” 

Seto said nothing.

“Think about who you hate most in the world,” Gozaburo growled, “and if you really hate that dull, stupid animal more than them.”

He nodded at the kaiju on the screen, staggering under the concussive force of an explosive, screeching in silent, feral rage though a blackened cloud. And Yuugi watched, Yami grasping his hand so hard it hurt, as Seto’s expression, wide-eyed and wary, slowly yielded to deep, empty horror. The light in his face dimming, like sunset, under a dark and sweeping revelation.

“Do you understand?” Gozaburo said, letting go.

Seto's eyes dropped to the floor.

“...Father,” he said, in a low voice, a perfect, deferential non-answer.

Gozaburo snorted with contempt. He reached over Seto’s shoulder, plucked a file folder off the desk, and shoved it firmly into Seto’s chest. Seto startled, his hands rising blindly to catch it. 

“Of course you understand. You just don't like it. Now get started. I have absolutely no use for these spineless excuses. You'll show me progress by tomorrow morning,” Gozaburo said, and left Seto standing by the desk, staring at the folder in bewildered shock.

He stood there for a long time, so quiet, so still, that for a moment Yuugi thought the memory ended there – that Kaiba remembered nothing after his stepfather left the room except a folder in his hands, an afternoon breeze wafting in, and the news, playing the same footage over and over again, an obsessive gouging, deeper and deeper into the mind. The apocalypse as nervous tic. 

But the stillness gave way to a trembling in his shoulders, little staccato shudders, like he was doing his best not to cry. He covered his eyes with his hand, his expression crumpling, surrendering to a voiceless, furious despair. The folder dropped to the floor, papers spilling out in loose leaves.

Yuugi twisted his hand out of Yami's and stole across the carpet to Seto, knowing it was impossible to comfort him, stranded in this lifeless hour. He was going to try anyway. There was never a time when he wouldn't have tried. 

"Seto…?" he said, touching Seto's shoulder.

The door swung open.

"Don't touch him," Kaiba said, striding into the room. Yuugi yanked his hand away, taking several steps back, as Kaiba loomed over himself. Seto looked up at him, no recognition in his eyes. 

Drift was pointless, Yuugi realized. All of this neural interfacing and Jaeger machinery was redundant. Anyone could revisit the past just by lying awake past midnight, alone in the dark. There was no such dream machine that allowed the past to see its future, battle-hardened and storm-faced, difficult to move. 

"Kaiba, your hand! _"_ Yami said, and Yuugi gasped.

He'd taken his Drivesuit glove off. A large burn crossed the back of his left hand, pale blisters swelling from the rippled, reddened skin. It was raw and fresh enough that Yuugi's gut clenched in sympathy. 

Kaiba ignored it.

"You can go now," he said. When neither of them moved, he grimaced, hissing a concession to their concern through his teeth. “We’ll talk _after_. Now wait outside. Please."

Yuugi started to speak, but Yami denied him with a swift tug. They'd get their answer later. 

The last thing they saw, before Yami pulled Yuugi into the central room of their labyrinth and closed the black glass door: Kaiba, leaning over his younger self, sweeping non-existent tears away with his thumbs. The vivid afternoon light darkened them to silhouettes, Kaiba’s mouth moving without sound. A word of advice? A promise? A blessing? No point in guessing. Only Kaiba knew.

* * *

The torches burned in their wall brackets, lighting up the vault, undisturbed by moving air or lack of fuel. Did they ever go out? Who lit them in the first place? Yuugi, sitting on the lower steps of a stone staircase, had turned those questions over in his head a few times, early on, when Yami had first awakened. Without leads, he'd let them gather dust in the half-forgotten shoeboxes of his mind, to be re-discovered on some drowsy rainy day. Every _what, when, where, why_ question about the Puzzle had been secondary to the question of the _who_ inside it.

Next to him, Yami was also studying the torch, chin propped on his fist, frowning in thought. Picking through what he'd learned about Kaiba, in pieces, and putting them all back together again. Kaiba's Drivesuit glove dangled from his other hand, boneless and black. They'd found it abandoned on the floor of the vault. 

Kaiba walked out of his memory room, not more than five minutes after they'd left. They stood up.

"We're almost done in here," he said, taking his glove back from Yami, their hands and eyes lingering on each other a half-second too long. With a dismissive flick, Kaiba flung the glove back onto the floor of the vault, several meters away. "Leave that there. Yuugi, how well do you tolerate pain?"

"I… " Yuugi started, and decided to cut straight to the heart of Kaiba's question. "Just tell me what you need from me."

"I need you to burn yourself. With a torch," Kaiba said. "If you're game."

"Why?" Yami said. "Do you need me to do it too?"

"I'm testing a hypothesis. Consider it data. _You_ , I need something else from."

So he'd deliberately burned himself. Why? But Kaiba seemed cagier than usual, and Yuugi didn't want to press him right now, not after the memory they'd just witnessed. He walked over to the nearest torch, pulling off his Drivesuit glove, the flames dancing with a light both dangerous and inviting. Is this how cats felt, he wondered, glancing at Kaiba; so eagerly seduced by fire?

He raised his bare hand towards the torch, his purple nail polish gleaming richly with firelight. Already he felt the heat on his knuckles, followed by a prickle of nerves. 

"Yami," he said. Yami came over and grabbed his wrist. 

"Aibou, are you sure?" he said, in an undertone. 

Yuugi threw a final look at Kaiba, sifting through possibilities. Not a joke. Not some convoluted test of mettle. 

"Do it."

Yami guided Yuugi's hand into the fire, turning it so the edge of his palm took the brunt of the flames. Instantly a searing pain bit through his hand, blistering, scorching white – Yuugi jerked his hand away, a burn already welting over his skin.

"You know," he said, clenching his teeth in a smile, cradling his hand, "if this is like a team bonding thing, we could've just gotten sweatshirts."

"Why not both, I wear a men's large," Kaiba said, motioning for Yuugi to show him the burn, nodding with satisfaction. "We're going to leave Drift now. Yami, focus on that glove on the floor. Don't think about anything else. Understood?"

"Got it," Yami said, peevishly; annoyed he hadn't solved this new riddle from Kaiba yet. 

Kaiba inhaled, clenching his burned hand in a fist, eyes narrowing with concentration...

The labyrinth collapsed around them, like the painted set of a stage play. The Conn Pod revealed itself dark and quiet around them. The console lights blinked, a twinkling array of fidgety stars. 

They were still Drifting. The first thing Yuugi felt was not fear but a rocketing hope, eager hungry desperate, squirming against the boundaries of Kaiba's Drivesuit, a rigid shell far too small for the feeling. The second was Yami's intractable insistence on _GLOVE_ , lying soft and hollow on the sand-gritted stone floor.

Isis's voice crackled through the radio.

"Rangers, come in. I've lost your signals. Ranger Kaiba, come in. Ranger Mutou? Are you there?"

He reached up to the radio, wincing as a sudden pain shot across his hand, so intensely hot he broke into a sweat.

With an unnerved thrill, Yuugi pulled his glove off, slowly, gingerly, taking care not to brush too hard or fast against the blistered flesh. His hand was burned. 

"I hear you, Commander Ishtar," he said.

"Thank goodness. And Ranger Kaiba?" she said, just as pure exultation flooded through him, a cold and heaving wave of confidence _I WAS RIGHT_ and power that almost knocked him off his feet. 

He looked to his right. Kaiba was there, with no glove in sight. He held his bare, burned hand aloft, his face shining with wolfish, wide-eyed triumph: control of the dream, at last.

* * *

They left the Conn Pod and stood patiently for the suit technicians to dismantle their Drivesuits. The technicians accepted Kaiba's swift lie that he'd accidentally dropped his glove in the gap between the Conn Pod and the gangway, and he brushed aside all suggestions of heading to the medical wing for the burns. Even between themselves, they exchanged very few words. Kaiba only told Yuugi to wait outside the changing room, returning minutes later with a first-aid kit.  

Yuugi followed Kaiba to a catwalk, high and lonely over the hangar floor. Kaiba leaned against the railing, his leg dangling over the edge into empty space, apparently completely indifferent to the dizzying height, and Yuugi cross-legged, squarely and safely in the center. The air in the hangar was dark blue, the halos of the lights shining on the White Dragons below rising up to meet them. People were still working, but this high up, with so much empty space around them, Yuugi felt vaguely like an astronaut, floating in orbit over the vast curve of a serenely turning world.

"Give me your hand," Kaiba said, opening the first aid kit and ferreting out a burn ointment. With stern focus he applied the ointment to Yuugi's burn, his hands sliding with smooth, painless care over Yuugi's hand, and bandaged it in gauze.

"Thanks," Yuugi said. "Do you want help with…?"

Kaiba was already bandaging his own hand, biting off the end of the gauze and tucking it in. He shoved the first-aid kit aside and pulled a brand-new deck of cards out of his pocket, tapping them out of the box and shuffling them with fluid expertise. 

He lay the deck down in front of Yuugi, who cut it without hesitation. 

“Do you play gin rummy?” Kaiba said, scooping up the deck. 

“Of course,” Yuugi said. “Deal ‘em.”

Kaiba dealt ten-card hands, twenty graceful flicks, and set the stock and discard, motioning for Yuugi to go ahead with a tip of his hand. They smoothly picked up the game, collecting and discarding, gathering their melds. Yami wafted out of the Puzzle and knelt next to Yuugi, lacing his hands over Yuugi's shoulder to rest his cheek as he watched. 

“Is Yami here?” Kaiba said, noting Yuugi’s sideways glance.

“Yeah,” Yuugi said. “Do you want to talk to him?”

“No. To both of you,” Kaiba said.

But he didn’t say anything, not yet, not after several more turns of gin rummy. With Mokuba’s words in his head, like a sign beside a road at night, briefly illuminated, Yuugi didn’t test the silence. 

“What you saw in Drift,” Kaiba said, picking a card off the discard pile, “was not pleasant. But that… is the world I live in. That’s the world my stepfather built around me.”

Yuugi’s gaze flew from his cards to his face, every stray emotion flattened. He was either collecting sevens or diamonds. He discarded, waiting for Yuugi to reply. 

 _I’m sorry,_ Yuugi wanted to say, but that seemed the wrong move.

“Kaiba, do you think I’m your enemy?" he said casually, and Kaiba stiffened.

"You tell me."

"I asked you first," Yuugi said.

A long quiet followed. Yuugi was rapidly realizing that Kaiba would rather say nothing than say the wrong answer. 

He picked up Kaiba’s discarded queen, flicking a random diamond down in its place. 

"I’m not your enemy,” he said.

Kaiba drew from the stock with his burned hand and studied his new card, for a long moment, exhaling. It was a breath that moved through his whole body, starting deep in his chest, dropping with deliberate slowness from his shoulders. 

“High command hid some things from you. But you need to know them. _I_ need you to know them. I'm the instability in White Dragon’s cortex,” he said, and Yuugi blinked. A surprise, but not. Still leaning against his shoulder, Yami stirred with curiosity. “I rewrote the neural load limiters to enable solo Drift, in secret, and it backfired. My plan failed, and my brother almost died for it.”

Yami nudged Yuugi aside, settling into their body, their shoulders rolling back. “Why’d you do it?”

“Because,” Kaiba said, throwing down a jack, “I was scared, and desperate. And now you have to drift with me.”

His voice was almost perfectly level, low and controlled. But where it wasn’t… they didn’t need Drift to feel the guilt, the self-loathing, dripping out of every word. Kaiba’s stunned terror as he trudged out of the water, carrying his half-conscious brother, came back to them, an echo of an echo. _What have I done?_

Yuugi took over again, just as Kaiba’s eyes flicked up to theirs. Bracing himself.

Yami had told him that Kaiba was nervous to tell him something; that he’d held onto a vision of catastrophe like a fistful of hot coal, unable to let go even though it burned him. Now, set against the memory of his stepfather, Yuugi started to grasp the full nature of Kaiba’s fear. 

But he searched himself and found none of his own. He found only a deep, impossible urge to reach back through the past and tell the child, from that amber afternoon in the study, that it was okay to cry.

“I’m still not your enemy,” he said, picking up the jack, discarding a seven.

“When Haga and Ryuzaki lost and died, I realized I needed him out,” Kaiba said, taking the seven. “I won’t let my brother die fighting a meaningless war over a hateful, violent world. If my stepfather’s right, if _that's_ the world we’re trying to save...” 

He finished with a bitter, unhappy snarl. “Then the kaiju can fucking have it.”

Their eyes met over the cards, ferociously direct, a wordless challenge; Yuugi’s breath stilled. Kaiba was talking in a circle, around a hole in the center. Asking him for something, but unable to say it out loud, too proud, too ashamed. Forgiveness? Sympathy? A reason to keep fighting? A reason to believe?

Kaiba looked away first, sideways at his Jaeger down below, then back at his cards. 

 _He can’t prove his stepfather wrong by himself,_ Yami murmured. _That was a trap from the start._

Yuugi agreed, eyeing his cards. There was the fight _against_ : those battle lines were clear. There was also the fight _for_. He was just one card short of gin, the two of hearts.

“I know that world. I don’t care for it. I wouldn’t have signed up for all this if I didn’t think there was something worth protecting, worth _saving_ , about us. I’m fighting for a different world,” he said. “A better one.”

“You don’t think I’m weak?” Kaiba growled, in a voice that implied he should.

“No. I don’t think about it like that,” Yuugi said. “We’re all under a lot of pressure. But I won't blame you or judge you for getting scared, because we’re _all_ scared. None of us are going through this alone. We’re piloting the Jaeger together. We’re fighting the monsters together. And when we end the war, it’s going to be together.”

“We need a better winning strategy than basic platitudes."

Impatience bristled out of Yami. Yuugi held him back. Kaiba was testing him, and his resolve, but he was also _listening_ , his expression set in a hard, narrow look.

"Kaiba, look. You’re my Drift partner,” he said. “And that _means_ something to me. That means whatever weight you’re carrying, I’m going to carry it with you. However much you want to give me! I’m not afraid of what you did or why you did it. And I’m not afraid – ”

* * *

“ – of _you_.”

Seto froze, cards in hand. The opposite game was a bold strategy: play to lose. Tell him how you failed. How you became hopeless. How you became powerless. Give him a reason to say no.

And yet, Yuugi’s expression was as steely-eyed as any he’d shown in Alaska, whether in the Kwoon combat room or against Dartz. No disgust. No anger or contempt. 

Unafraid.

And Seto, having seen the fire of his convictions long before they went into Drift, and feeling the blazing heat of it now – _something worth saving about us_ – started to believe him. 

* * *

For a moment, Kaiba was still, achingly wary. 

His hand rose to his eyes, briefly hooding them; then he dragged it down his face, with a rawness to his expression like he’d shed some old, dulled layer and revealed the new one underneath. 

“Well,” he said quietly, plucking a card from his hand. “I hope I never give you a reason to change your mind.”

He tossed it onto the discard pile.

Yuugi picked up Kaiba’s discarded two hearts and knocked, showing his gin, smiling. 

Kaiba returned the smile, small but sly; he knew he’d handed the win to Yuugi.

“Round two?” he said.

“Always,” Yuugi said, gathering all the cards and re-shuffling them. Kaiba tallied their points into his phone.

“So you think it’s possible to end the war,” he said, as Yuugi re-dealt the cards. “Based on what?”

“A... feeling?” Yuugi said sheepishly, and Kaiba scoffed.

“Yeah, I also have a ‘feeling.’ Based on _that_.”

He nodded at the Puzzle. Beside Yuugi, Yami shifted attentively, his curiosity flooding through Yuugi with a warm tingle.

“Does it have anything to do with this?” Yuugi said, pointing at the bandaged burn across the back of his own hand.

“Yes. Like I said, I have a hypothesis. It sounds outlandish, but maybe not to… you two.”

“We’re all ears,” Yuugi said, remembering Mokuba’s cheat code.

“So,” Kaiba said. “The kaiju have us under a siege. All we’ve done for the past ten years is defend, with no way of attacking back. A kaiju acts, we react, we wait for the next. Rinse, wash, repeat. And the reason we have our hands tied, strategically, is because we don't how to get into _their_ dimension. Hold on, I’m not done.”

Yuugi hastily pocketed his question.

“When we were in Drift in Anchorage, in the labyrinth, I scratched my hand on a door. That scratch was still on my hand _after_ I left Drift. Last night, I started to suspect the scratch wasn't just some weird, heightened psychosomatic response. So I – ”

“Wait," Yami said testily, abruptly taking over, and Yuugi, thrown backwards out of his body, felt a surge of frustration, from something denied. " _When_ last night? _How?_ "

Kaiba lifted an eyebrow. “Does Yuugi know about last night?”

 _Know what,_ Yuugi said, and Yami bit his lip.

That was answer enough for Kaiba, who sucked in a breath, light and swift, thinking.

“He should know," he decided. "He’ll find out, sooner or later.”

“ _Hold on,_ ” Yami said, with sudden alarm. Aas undeniable as it was, that he and Kaiba had danced for a brief, brilliant second past the limits of good sense, he hadn’t expected _this_ part to happen so fast.

“We kissed – ”

 _WHAT?!_ Yuugi said, with an awkward laugh, a crunch in his chest, as Kaiba leaned forward, propping himself up on one hand over the cards arrayed on the catwalk. He was perfectly positioned to whisper, low and heated, right into Yami’s bright red ear: " _...and I could still taste you._ "

With a feline smile, he withdrew, leaving Yami with a blush like a bonfire.

 _You were going to tell me, right?_ Yuugi said. _I suspected... well, something._

 _Yes,_ Yami muttered. _At some point._

“Anyway,” Kaiba said, giving Yami a smirking once-over, biting back a laugh. God, he’d been right all along. Kaiba did _not_ fool around. “ _Anyway_. I had something, but not enough to work with. Somehow, when I’m in… let’s call it Puzzlespace, it has a physical effect on me in realspace. Is this a phenomenon specific to me? Or do other people experience it too? And can it be applied to something other than a human being? I broke my dogtag in our slow entry Drift, and it came out unbroken. But I don't give a shit about my dogtag, so I wasn't thinking about it. I think intent _matters_."

Yuugi took over again, Yami’s embarrassment still lingering, at a simmer, all over them. “So that’s why you had me burn my hand. And why you told Yami to think about the glove.”

“Right. And why we Drifted with a stronger orichalcum gel than usual. Pain is impossible to forget,” he said, with an idle glance towards his bandaged hand, “but Yami, thinking about the glove on the floor, his focus strengthened by the o-gel's neural amplification... that’s how he was able to leave it there.”

“I see where you’re going with this,” Yuugi said excitedly; his mind was racing, tearing around every curve in Kaiba’s theory, towards a conclusion that loomed on the horizon, more distinct with every passing second. “So if stuff can happen to us in Puzzlespace, and we can bring stuff into Puzzlespace, that means… Puzzlespace isn’t just in our heads? It’s somewhere else!”

“Exactly,” Kaiba said, with a satisfied smile. “And our Drift data – _your_ Drift data, and whoever you’re Drifting with – aligns with this. There are moments when the data makes it look like we’re just not here. Maybe we really aren’t.”

Yuugi let that sink in, running his tongue along his teeth, thinking.

"But how are we here _and_ there at the same time? Because I know we don't have, like, mindless clones waiting for our consciousness in Puzzlespace. That doesn't track."

"I think… hm." Kaiba tilted his head, his gaze narrowing on a point suspended in space. Yuugi let the silence stretch. "It's like looking in a mirror. It looks like there's two of you. But you _are_ your reflection, and whatever happens to your reflection happens to you. And once you move away from the mirror, that reflection disappears. The trick might be how to go through the looking-glass entirely."

"The trick of what?" Yuugi said.

Kaiba hesitated, a flicker of self-consciousness in his eyes.

“I think your Puzzle is a doorway into a different dimension.”

A thrill ran up Yuugi’s spine. With a tight nod, he urged him onwards.

In the dim blue air of the hangar, far above the noise on the ground floor, his face took on a ferocious clarity of purpose: a tiger on the hunt, hidden in the grasses.

“Maybe even multiple dimensions. And if we master its power, if we truly solve your Puzzle and figure out how to cross dimensions, we can finally – _finally_ – fight _back_.”

Yuugi and Yami stared at him, both struck by the vision he’d just laid out before them. Yami was sitting upright now, the full splendor of Kaiba’s theory unfurling through Yuugi’s head. No more waiting, no more helplessness… at last, a way forward.

“Then let’s _solve_ it!" he said, voice rising with excitement. “How can I help?”

“For now, keep it secret. Strictly between us, and Commander Ishtar. I’m already in hot water for altering my Jaeger,” Kaiba said. “I don’t want more trouble.”

“Got it,” Yuugi said. “So what’s next?”

Kaiba inhaled and sighed, his frown turning towards his Jaegers. He ran both hands backwards through his hair in idle touslement, hanging them on the back of his neck, lost in thought. It was all so relaxed and unstudied that Yuugi, simply watching him think, felt a flash of desire, an urge to be those hands and trace that same path, through the soft tangles of his hair, around his sloping neck, and follow it farther down. Yami’s desire. No, his. Oh, fuck.

Kaiba’s eyes drifted back to the Puzzle, dangling in the slouch of Yuugi’s torso, mentally taking it apart. Yuugi’s hand slipped under it, cradling it, as Yami dug further into Kaiba’s theory. What did all of that mean for _him?_

“I’ll get back to you,” Kaiba said, finally.

There was a chime from his pocket. Kaiba pulled his ringing phone out of his pocket, glancing at the cards in his hand as he set them face-down. They’d almost completely forgotten the game. 

“It's late, where are you?” he said, and frowned. “Why are you down there? You said you were going t – no, I’m not mad, I just… okay. Thank you for letting me know. No, I’m with Yuugi. Playing cards. Talking... I’ll ask. Yuugi, Mokuba’s at Domino Plaza. He wants to know if he can get you anything before he heads back.”

Yuugi grinned. “Is Burger World still there?”

“Mokuba, did you catch that? …He says it’s still there. What do you want?”

“A cheeseburger with sauteed onions and a fried egg. And the fully-loaded fries,” Yuugi said. Kaiba chuffed. 

“The ones they drown in sauce? I like your style,” he said, and turned his head, speaking low and private into the phone. It was impossible not to hear, but regardless Yuugi did his best not to listen, studying his hand of cards. “...you feeling? Good. I’m fine. Yes, I mean it. When are you coming h... okay. See you soon.”

He set his phone down, his attention returning to the cards. 

“I _dream_ about Burger World,” Yuugi said happily. “And that arcade on Kagami Street. I’m pretty sure they cried when I left for Anchorage.”

“I know that place. I haven’t gone in years,” Kaiba said, throwing the first card down. “Best day of my life was when I topped the leaderboard in _Legendary Heroes_.”

“Wait, are you ' _STO_?’ Holy _shit!_ I blew so much money trying to beat your score. I could’ve bought like, eighty thousand burgers with that money. I swear to God it’s gonna happen some day, just watch,” Yuugi said. Kaiba laughed, low and smug.

“Good fucking luck! You can have that for free,” he said, and they slipped back easily into the rhythm of the game. 

* * *

 _SETO ⭐🐉💙  
_ _We’re up on the L7 catwalk  
_ _9:17 PM  
_

 _MOKUBA  
_ _omw  
_ _9:17 PM  
_

Mokuba took the elevator up to L7 and made his way to the catwalk, several stories over the hangar, and one of Seto’s favorite places in the Shatterdome. He just liked to perch there, high over the noise, like a bird on a telephone wire, an overgrown sparrow. 

Mokuba’s whole right shoulder was sore and aching, with a dull burn that was crawling through the rest of his body. His socket itched like the devil, and he wasn’t supposed to scratch. He’d pushed himself far too hard just trying to stand on his feet all day, to say nothing of taking the clattering old metro and bumping shoulders with strangers in the noisy, smog-choked streets of downtown Domino. But standing in the lights of the plaza with Rebecca, anonymized by a hoodie and dark sunglasses, surrounded by people moving through the mundane motions of their days (friends chattering, laughing over their phones; a man toting a sleepy child; two women, shyly linking hands) had been a relief. 

The threat was still breathing down their necks, of course: the signs for kaiju shelters and evacuation routes were posted everywhere, with warnings in multiple languages. Every other TV screen Mokuba passed, flickering shards of light hanging in dark bars and FamilyMarts, had something to say about WHITE DRAGON DESTROYED BY DES GARDIUS – RANGER KAIBA LIVES TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY – NEW RANGER ASSIGNED TO DOMINO. And yet, life was continuing, with sprawling nonchalance, flouting the monsters with iced coffees in hand. 

It was both a relief and a reminder. Life in the Shatterdome was life _in a Shatterdome,_ and sometimes the war could fucking wait. 

He pushed through the door onto the catwalk and paused, half-hidden in darkness and distance from the two seated figures, just to observe.

Yuugi leaned forward, saying something indistinct. Seto's shoulders rocked with amusement. 

Another relief. 

Mokuba strolled towards them, floral boots rattling the grating, toting the paper carry-out bag laden with food on his left arm. Seto’s back was to him, which meant Yuugi saw him first, straightening up and welcoming him with a cheery smile. Mokuba grinned back, although he couldn’t lie: that damn gold thing hanging from Yuugi's neck still weirded him out.

“Hey, dorks. Special delivery,” he said, stopping next to Seto, holding out his left arm. 

Seto twisted at the waist and reached up, carefully sliding the bag off his arm. “You feeling alright?”

“Ah, you know,” Mokuba flipped his hair with a sleek flourish. “Hair toss, check my nails. Baby how you doin'. Feelin' good as hell."

Seto looked bemused; Yuugi laughed.

“He lives under his dork rock, he knows nothing about the classics,” Mokuba said, to Yuugi. “Your burger’s on top.”

Seto set the paper bag on the catwalk, next to the card game spread out between them, pulled out a cardboard carry-out box with a thick burger squashed inside, and handed it to Yuugi. Yuugi eagerly ripped it open, inhaling the newly-freed cloud of savory steam with lusty pleasure.

“No burritos?” Seto said, peering into the depths of the bag. 

“Yeah, Isis sent me... somewhere else? She didn’t explain and she told me not to tell,” Mokuba said, who'd been thrilled to have been roped into her little conspiracy.

With a raised eyebrow, Seto plunged his hand into the bag, lifting out another carry-out box. He opened it and laughed, a loud, knowing bark. It was a plump, crunchy sandwich, with melted cheese oozing over sheets of ham, cut in half and artfully dusted with powdered sugar. Tucked beside it was a small ramekin of raspberry preserves. 

“Wha’a fugh is ‘ _at_?” Yuugi said, through a mouthful of burger.

“It's a monte cristo. A testament to human creativity,” Seto declared. 

"Wayh.” Yuugi chewed, swallowed, and frowned. “That’s a _sandwich_.”

“I’m so glad my new Drift partner has such keen powers of insight.”

Yuugi ignored the jibe. “Your wish… you were _serious?!_ ”

“Maybe,” Seto said, and took an enormous bite off the corner. He tilted, offering the sandwich up to Mokuba with one hand, the other underneath it, catching crumbs. “Mm?”

“No, I’ll just lose it over the side,” Mokuba said. The anti-rejection drugs made him nauseous, and the rich scent of their food was making him jealous, with a frustrated moan of complaint from his stomach. He cast a quick eye over the scene: Yuugi sitting cross-legged on the floor, burger in hand, staring mystified at Seto, smirking and relaxed with one leg extended. A card game in full swing, and already an inside joke, kind of.

Okay. Seto was keeping his promise.

“Enjoy it," Mokuba said. “Have fun. I’m wiped. I’m gonna go pass the fuck out.”

He leaned over, loosely head-locked Seto in lieu of a proper hug, and smacked a swift kiss to the top of his head, because he was exhausted, hungry, satisfied, in pain, and relieved, with no room left for restraint; because he wanted Yuugi to know this person was loved, and if Yuugi breathed at him wrong he’d throw him over the side of the catwalk, single-handed, easy, he was twice his size; and because he felt like it. 

If Seto was surprised at being hit with this dart, he didn't show it, reaching up and squeezing Mokuba's arm in return.

“Good night. Call me if you need anything,” he said, as Mokuba pulled away.

“Thanks for the burger. You’re a saint,” Yuugi said. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Mokuba said, waving them off. 

He turned back towards the door at the end of the catwalk, catching the last bits of conversation. 

“Kaiba, after everything you suspect about _this_ , how can you justify using its power on something like _that_?” Yuugi said, exasperated, and in a different voice. The doppelganger?

But Seto snorted, unbothered. “Call me Seto. Maybe you should try it first. Here… "

Mokuba smiled to himself. Seemed like all the wars were waiting tonight. At ease with the evening, he left, toppled face-down into bed, and passed out.

* * *

 

Far below them, on the hangar floor, Pegasus and Isis were making a late-night inspection of the state of Jaeger repairs. Pegasus flipped through a tablet, fixing a studious frown on White Dragon, Mark IV, with the same intensity he gave studying someone’s face, for portraiture or... otherwise. Isis waited patiently beside him, wondering if things like Jaegers, so laden with memory and feeling, everything welded together in the hot pursuit of victory, also had minds of their own, minds that could be read and excavated. 

Pegasus gave White Dragon a nod of approval and handed the tablet back to the senior engineer.

“Well, I think that’s it for today,” he said. “Isis? Any reason to lose any sleep tonight?”

The Millennium Tauk was quiet. The kaiju sirens would not go off tonight. “None.”

“How about a glass of wine, then?” he said, as they strolled towards the end of the hangar. “I’ve been saving an exquisite 2017 Bordeaux for a night like this. Apparently the mouthfeel is just…”

He stopped, turning slightly, head swiveling up towards the catwalk that crossed the highest levels of the hangar, where its rigid lines were interrupted by two small figures, sitting close together. Again his eye narrowed, the gold one glinting, and he smiled thinly.

“I see our racehorse is warming up to his little goat,” he said.

More than that, Isis thought. In her pocket, Seto’s two texts rested unanswered: a simple little _thank you_ , followed shortly by _does this mean I was right, or YOU were right?_ He could figure that one out himself. 

He’d said nothing about his experiment yet, which put her more on edge than she liked to admit.

“Did you really doubt him?” she said.

“Oh, come on,” Pegasus said. “That’s not fair. _You_ get spoilers. All _I_ get is a mental livestream of science trivia, codependence, and postmodern anxiety.”

A voice swung down between them, polite but serrated. “So _that’s_ him. I was wondering where he was.” 

Isis turned, the Millennium Tauk zinging with sudden energy. The speaker was a young man, slight and white-haired, with a familiar object in his hands, her missing tablet; a familiar object hanging from his neck, a gold ring with dangling teeth; and his gaze turned up, fixed on Seto and Yuugi on the catwalk.

“Who?” she said.

The man looked at her.

“The new Ranger,” he said. “Do you really think he can get the job done?”

Something in his eyes sent apprehension crawling all over her, like cold fingers running along her scalp. Beside her, Pegasus paused, expression narrowing with intent curiosity. The man wore a look that didn’t quite fit, both resentful and smug in his own body. 

And Isis, staring at him, suddenly understood. Wielding a Millennium Item demanded constant double meanings and games of moral brinkmanship – lies on lies on lies, all of them hurtling towards the edge of truth until they swerved free. This man was not talking about Yuugi Mutou, the new Ranger. A canny smile curved across his face. He was talking about the _other_ new Ranger. 

A single glance at Pegasus confirmed it, who had become catlike in his bracing stillness. 

“What do _you_ know about it?” Isis growled, advancing on Bakura Ryou, all her buried-alive frustration breaking free and bursting out, boiling and feverish. Her hands clenched into fists. She was ready to snap that mocking smile in half. “Do you _know_ who that is? Do you know something I _don’t_? Tell me! For heaven’s sake, tell – !” 

Pegasus yanked her away, his hand on her shoulder. She stumbled backwards, back into herself with a horrified gasp, one hand flying up to steady her galloping heart, already sickened by regret. She hadn’t lost her temper like that in years. 

“Max, I…” she breathed, into Pegasus’ stony, all-too-knowing face, but he brushed her embarrassment aside with a wave of his hand. Both his brown eye and his gold Eye flew back to Bakura Ryou, the same Bakura Ryou from seconds before but completely different, blinking and fidgeting with hesitant confusion.

He mustered up a clear voice. "Are you alright?"

“Simply a little overworked, Ryou, thank you,” Pegasus said, his arm around her shoulders. “She’ll be right as rain in no time.”

“I’m... so sorry. Hopefully this might make things a little easier? I found your tablet in F Lab the other day, but I haven’t had a chance to return it,” Ryou said. He held out her tablet. 

She took the tablet, speechless. Did he have any idea? No. Save for his sweet offering of a smile, his face was tight with private uncertainty, like he knew he was missing something.

“How kind. Good night,” Pegasus said briskly. Ryou followed his cue, almost grateful, hastily beating a retreat out of the hangar and back into the bowels of the Shatterdome. Once he was gone, Isis shrugged out from under Pegasus’ arm, straightening up, rolling the dignity back into her shoulders. For a single, blazing second, she’d been back in her Jaeger with Rishid, right at the moment when the kaiju fell into their trap, and she was finally, _finally_ free to lose her cool.

“He knows something,” she said, quiet. “The... whoever’s in there, in the Millennium Ring.”

“Yes, _something_ ,” Pegasus agreed. “But the Ring stops my Eye, and that boy's not like Yuugi Mutou. He doesn't know. We need to keep an eye on him, although we’ve lost some advantage. What bit you?!”

“You were right. It’s stress and overwork," she said. "Maybe _I’ll_ go down to Kaiba’s beach house."

“And just leave me with him? Don't you dare.”

Isis laughed, a little empty, cold. Her chest was still clenched, her heartbeat skittering. She wanted to slink off into some warm, hidden corner and curl up, watch fate’s dark shadow pass her by on its endless hunt, but she couldn’t. There was work to do. Now. Tomorrow. Always.

“I’ll take that glass of wine now," she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I let Yami and Kaiba do what they wanted, and they wanted to jump right into it. i always planned on pride being a faster burn than rival, but it's all on fire now, babes...
> 
> 2\. back in june 2019 i was taking a walk by the ocean and realized that yugioh and pacific rim have two key things in common: (a) big, beautiful monsters and (b) characters crossing dimensions.
> 
> 3\. my little jaeger: friendship is magic.
> 
> 4\. antiquities easter egg: asterion is the name of one of the sacred kings of crete.
> 
> 5\. unfortunately, i don't know when the next update for this fic will be :( i wrote 50,000 words before i posted a single one, which makes this the first chapter i've posted where i don't have any of the next chapter written. i have a plan for chapter 8, but everything after that needs some tighter outlining. so: once i've written 30k more, i'll start posting again. i post updates and excerpts in the ["some beast"](https://kaibacorpintern.tumblr.com/tagged/some+beast) tag on my blog, and there's also [this fun story happening over here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22597876/chapters/54004645)
> 
> that being said, this chapter wraps up what i've thought of as the first arc: kaiba submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known. up next.... rewards?!
> 
> 5\. i'm in quarantine, and hopefully, you are too! quarantine will keep us safe; art and entertainment will keep us sane. If you're passing the time with fanfiction, please remember to toss a coin (comments, kudos) to your Witchers, o valley of plenty. we do this for fun, for free, and for you.
> 
> and finally, from bottom of my heart, thanks for reading!!


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